Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 58
24.03.2006
be, so well that nobody of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the
Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all
service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken
in the solution of what we term 'the race problem.' "
As is shown by these quotations Booker Washington used these Sunday night
talks to crystalize, interpret, and summarize the meaning and significance of the
kind of education which Tuskegee gives. He, the supreme head of the
institution, reserved to himself this supremely important task. The heads of the
manifold trades are naturally and properly concerned primarily with turning raw
boys and girls into good workmen and workwomen. The academic teachers in
the school are similarly
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interested in helping them as students to secure a mastery of their several
subjects. The military commandants are concerned with their ability to drill,
march, carry themselves properly, and take proper care of their persons and
rooms. The physician is interested in their physical health and the chaplain in
their religious training. Important as are all these phases of Tuskegee's training
and closely as he watched each Mr. Washington realized that they might all be
well done and yet Tuskegee fail in its supreme purpose: namely, the making of
manly men and womanly women out of raw boys and girls. As he said in one of
the passages quoted, "character is the only thing worth fighting for." Now, while
the forming of character is the aim, and in some appreciable degree the
achievement, of every worth-while educational institution, it is to a peculiar
degree the aim and the achievement of Tuskegee. The ten million Negroes in the
United States need trained leaders of their own race more than they need
anything else. Whatever else they should or should not have these leaders must
have character. Since Tuskegee is the largest of the educational institutions for
Negroes, with the man at its head who was commonly recognized as the leader
of leaders in his race, naturally the heaviest responsibility in the training of these
leaders fell, and will continue to fall, upon Tuskegee. Consequently the task at
Tuskegee is not so much to educate so many thousands of young men and
women as to train as many leaders for the Negro people as can possibly be done
and done well within a given space of time. These Tuskegee graduates lead by
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the power of example and not by agitation. One runs a farm and achieves so