Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 61
24.03.2006
In short, these Negro farmers were no more eager to be reformed and improved
in their methods than are any normal people. There is a shallow popular
sentiment that unless people are eager for enlightenment and gratefully receive
what is offered them they should be left unenlightened. Booker Washington
never shared this sentiment. His agent reported that in response to their appeals
for the raising of a better grade of cattle, hogs, and fowl the farmers replied that
the stock they had was good enough. One of their favorite comments was,
"When you eat an egg what difference does it make to you whether that egg was
laid by a full-blooded fowl or a mongrel?" Instead of being discouraged or
disgusted by this attitude on the part of the people he merely regarded it as what
was to be expected and set about devising means to overcome it. As always he
placed his chief reliance upon the persuasive eloquence of the concrete. He
decided to send blooded stock and properly raised product's around among the
farmers so that they might compare them with their inferior stock and products
and see the difference with their own eyes. This plan was later carried out
through the Jesup Wagon contributed by the late Morris K. Jesup of New York.
This wagon was a peripatetic farmers' school. It took a concentrated essence of
Tuskegees' agricultural department to the farmers who could not or would not
come to Tuskegee.
The wagon was drawn by a well-bred and well-fed mule.
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A good breed of cow was tied behind. Several chickens of good breeds, welldeveloped
ears of corn, stalks of cotton, bundles of oats and seeds, and garden
products, which ought at the time to be growing in the locality, together with a
proper plow, for deep plowing, were loaded upon the wagon. The driver would
pull up before a farmhouse, deliver his message, and point out the strong points
of his wagonload and would finally request a strip of ground for cultivation.
This request granted he would harness the mule to the plow, break the ground
deep, make his rows, plant his seeds, and move on to the next locality. With a
carefully planned follow-up system he would return to each such plot for
cultivation and harvest, and, most important of all, to demonstrate the truths he
had sought to impress upon the people by word of mouth. Where the first driver
sent out was a general farmer, the second would be, let us say, a dairyman, the
third a truck gardener, and finally a poultry raiser would go; usually a woman,
since in the South women, for the most part, handle this phase of farming. These
agents also distribute pamphlets prepared by the Agricultural Research
Department of Tuskegee on such subjects as school gardening, twenty-one ways