Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 202
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Principal.
First and last on these apparently aimless strolls with a stenographer he visited
not only the classrooms and shops but every corner of the great institution. He
would return to his office with a notebook full of memoranda of matters to be
followed up or changed, and of people to be commended or censured for their
efficient or inefficient handling of this, that, or the other piece of work. Once
after writing a series of letters calling attention to ragged tablecloths, unclean
napkins, and uncleanliness in other forms in kitchens, bakery, and dining-rooms
without the desired result, he personally took charge of the situation, organized
a squad of workers, put things in proper condition, and then insisted that they be
kept in such condition.
His passion to utilize every fraction of time to its maximum advantage led him
even to smuggle a stenographer into the formal annual exercises of the Bible
Training School so that he might during the exercises clandestinely dictate notes
for the head of the Bible school as to those features in which the program was
weak, failed "to get across," did not hold the interest of the people, seemed to be
over their heads, or whatever might be his diagnosis of the difficulty. He was
not interested in the program for and of itself, but was keenly interested in its
effect upon the people. If it interested and helped them, it was a good program;
if it did not, it was a poor program and no
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amount of learning or technical perfection could redeem it. He sometimes
reduced his more scholarly teachers to the verge of despair by his insistence that
there should be nothing on the program at any exercise to which the public was
invited which the every-day man and woman could not understand and
appreciate.
In opening the chapter we mentioned Booker Washington's faculty for giving
attention to apparently trivial details without losing sight of his large policies
and purposes. This was part of his habit of taking nothing for granted. He never
assumed that people would do or had done what they should do or should have
done any more than he assumed they would not or had not done what they
should. He neither trusted nor distrusted them. He kept himself constantly
informed. Every person employed by the institution from the most important
department heads down to the men who removed ashes and garbage were under
the stimulating apprehension that his eye might be upon them at any moment.
24.03.2006