Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 21
24.03.2006
He and his teachers then began to go out on Sundays and give the people
homely talks on how to improve their living conditions. They encouraged the
farmers to come to the school farm and learn how to grow a variety of crops to
supplement the cotton crop which was their sole reliance. They relieved the
distress of individual families. Mrs. Washington gathered together in an old loft
the farmers' wives and daughters who were in the habit of loafing about the
village of Tuskegee on Saturday afternoons and formed them into a woman's
club for the improvement of the living conditions in their homes and
communities. Mr. Washington and his teachers went right onto the farms and
into the homes, and into the churches and the schools, and everywhere showed,
for the most part by concrete object-lessons, how they could make their farms
more productive, their homes more comfortable, their schools more useful, and
their church services more inspiring. All this was done not with an idea of
starting an extension department or a social service department, but merely
because these people needed help, and Mr. Washington knew that both teachers
and students would help themselves in helping them. Finally, chiefly through
the efforts of Mrs. Washington, a model country school was established in the
district adjoining the Institute's property. This school is
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a farm home where the young teacher and his wife, both graduates of Tuskegee,
teach the boys and girls who come to them each day how to live on a farm--
teach them by practice and object-lesson as well as by precept. They follow the
ordinary country school curriculum, but that is a small and relatively
unimportant part of what this school gives its pupils. Then, too, the teachers of
Tuskegee early started campaigns looking to the extending of the school terms
throughout Macon County and the adjoining counties from three to five months,
as was customary, to nine months.
And this work of Tuskegee beyond its own borders grew as constantly in
volume and extent as the work within its borders, so that Tuskegee soon became
the vital force-- the yeast that was raising the level of life and well-being
throughout, first, the town and neighborhood of Tuskegee, then the County of
Macon, then the surrounding counties and the State of Alabama; and finally, in
conjunction with its mother, Hampton, and its children situated at strategic
points throughout the South, the entire Negro people of the South, and indirectly
the whole nation.
And as the school grew, so grew the man whose life was its embodiment. It is