Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
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<strong>Booker</strong> T. <strong>Washington</strong>, <strong>Builder</strong> of a Civilization. 175<br />
teachers. The school through its varied forms of extension work influences<br />
yearly about thirty thousand people. It owns seventeen hundred acres of land<br />
and conducts twenty different industries aside from its academic work. The<br />
buildings and property are valued at one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. It<br />
has also its own electric light plant and water-works and an endowment of over<br />
thirty-two thousand dollars. In concluding his book Mr. Holtzclaw says:"I see<br />
more clearly than ever before the great task that is before me, and I propose to<br />
continue the struggle. It is an appalling task: a State with more than a million<br />
Negroes to be educated, with half a million children of school age, 35 per cent.<br />
of whom at the present time attend no school at all (only 36 per cent. in average<br />
attendance), a State whose dual school system makes it impossible to furnish<br />
more than a mere pittance for the education of each child--yet these children<br />
must be educated, must be<br />
Page 243<br />
unfettered, set free. That freedom for which Christian men and women, North<br />
and South, have worked and prayed so long must be realized in the lives of<br />
these young people. This, then, is my task, the war that I must wage; and I<br />
propose to stay on the firing-line and fight the good fight of faith."<br />
Another Tuskegee graduate in whom Mr. <strong>Washington</strong> was especially interested<br />
is Isaac Fisher. Fisher has been awarded the following prizes for his writings:<br />
"What We've Learned About the Rum Question," $500; "German and <strong>American</strong><br />
Methods of Regulating Trusts," $400 (in order to write this paper Mr. Fisher had<br />
to acquire a reading knowledge of German which he did alone and unaided in a<br />
few months' time; "Ten of the Best Reasons Why People Should Live in<br />
Missouri," $100; "A Plan to Give the South a System of Highways Suited to Its<br />
Needs, $100; "The Most Practicable Method of Beginning a Tariff Reduction,"<br />
honorable mention. (Upon the request of the chief examiner of the United States<br />
Tariff Board this essay was sent to that body for its use.) Besides these, Mr.<br />
Fisher has taken several minor prizes for compositions on various subjects.<br />
It would be difficult to say, however, whether <strong>Booker</strong> <strong>Washington</strong> showed<br />
greater interest in the most brilliant or the most backward students. Certain it is<br />
that the most backward students won his special attention and encouragement.<br />
In the early days of the school there was a student by the name of Jailous Perdue<br />
whom Mr. <strong>Washington</strong><br />
24.03.2006