Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 194
address before the delegates to the National Council of Congregational
Churches, in New Haven, Conn., in which he well illustrated his belief already
quoted, "that a large part of the mission of both Hampton and Tuskegee is to
keep the cause of Negro education before the country." He said in part:
"There is sometimes much talk about the inferiority of the Negro. In practice,
however, the idea appears to be that he is a sort of super-man. He is expected
with about one-fifth or one-tenth of what the whites receive for their education
to make as much progress as they are making. Taking the Southern States as a
whole, about $10.23 per capita is spent in educating the average white boy or
girl, and the sum of $2.82 per capita in educating the average black child.
"In order to furnish the Negro with educational facilities so that the 2,000,000
children of school age now out of school and the 1,000,000 who are unable to
read or write can have the proper chance in life it will be necessary to increase
the $9,000,000 now being expended annually for Negro public school education
in the South to about $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 annually."
And in conclusion he said: "At the present rate, it is
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taking not a few days or a few years, but a century or more to get Negro
education on a plane at all similar to that on which the education of the whites
now is. To bring Negro education up where it ought to be will take the
combined and increased efforts of all the agencies now engaged in this work.
The North, the South, the religious associations, the educational boards, white
people and black people, all will have to coÖperate in a great effort for this
common end."
These were the last words he ever spoke at a great public meeting. They show
his acute realization of the immensity of the task to which he literally gave his
life, and his dread lest what had been accomplished be overestimated with a
consequent slackening of effort.
A very cordial friendship existed between Mr. Washington and his Trustees.
Every man among them was his selection and joined the Board on his invitation.
In the year 1912 they manifested their friendship and interest in the most
practical of ways by volunteering to raise a guarantee fund of $50,000 a year for
five years to help bridge the ever-widening gap between the income of the
school and its unavoidably mounting expenses. To do this, aside from
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