Page:The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race (1919).djvu/13

Booker Taliaferro Washington, M. A. LL. D.

OOKER T. WASHINGTON, a

model of efficiency, was born a slave but he lived to absorb so much of the white man's civilization that he taught not only Negroes by a new method, but had his method adopted by white men as well. Dr. Washington attended Hampton Institute, earning his way as he went. In deed all that Dr. Washington had as a start for his most remarkable career, was a determination to better himself and his people. He lived to found and serve till it was fully established with no possible chance of failure, the largest institution for Negroes in the world Tuskegee Institute. This school has become a model for schools in all parts of the world. Dr. Washington also founded the National Negro Business League, The Inter national Race Congress, and was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Education Board.

He was honored by Harvard University with the degree of Master of Arts and was given the degree of LL. D. by Dartmouth. In addition to these he was given honary degrees by a number of the leading Eastern and Southern Colleges. This was done as a recognition of his work. Dr. Washing ton never ceased to study, he studied at home, on the trains, on the long trips through the country. He was as close a student of books as he was of men. His judgments of men and things are brought out clearly in the many books and periodicals of which he is the author.

Booker T. Washington who died at his home early Sunday morning, Nov. 14, 1915, was a big man out in the world ; he was a bigger man at home among his teachers. The world knew him for his eloquence, his homely wit, his tact, his shrewd diplomacy. We knew him at home for his broad sympathies, for his kindness, his attention to little things, his infinite power of planning and working. His two last acts, one abroad and one at home, are strikingly significant of his balanced life. His last act before the world was to make a journey to deliver an address. His last act at home was to repair an old board fence which he had unwittingly ordered torn down.

At home or abroad he was never too big for even the humblest man to approach. Indeed he had a sort of craze for bringing together the rude illiterate and the more cultivated members of his race. He liked to assemble the rude black farmer, the school teacher, the lawyer and the business man. He had a fondness for stopping the half illiterate preacher, for getting such in his office and looking into their minds. An oldtime mammy, or an old, old Negro farmer in his audiences seemed to inspire him more than the richest and most distinguished. He always rushed, as it were, into the arms of such at. the closing of his big meetings. Probably no single organization with which he ever had connection gave him quite the genuine satisfaction he got from the Annual Farmers' Conference. He delighted to banter these old fellows, to listen to their rude speeches and homely sayings. Many of his own stories and anecdotes sprang out of these meetings.

But he was no mere stag acquaintance. He welcomed all such to his fireside, to his office, his precious time, his helping hand, the mother protesting that her child did not make a class high enough, the student smarting under some misunderstanding with a teacher, the white banker or white farmer wishing to transact business all had free access to him. To be sure he kept a closed office, but this was to gain dispatch, not to exclude. It was no uncommon sight to find a vagrant Negro preacher, a distinguished visitor, a Negro farmer, a teacher or two, and a few students all waiting to see him. . Reports say that the doctors wondered how he lived so long. The more is the marvel when one thinks of the burdens he bore. Having to raise thousands of dollars to provide food, heat, comfortable lodgings for 1500 students, he nevertheless kept his finger on the smallest details. Now he was dictating a letter asking for funds, the next moment he would be summoning a workman or dictating a note about the weeds in a plot of ground, about a hedge, or a broken window pane. One moment he would be dictating a speech for some national occasion, the next he would be ad vising a means of disposing of "old Mollie," one of the cows of the dairy herd, or "old Phil," a lame mule. So it was with the eggs and chickens from the poultry yard, the swell potatoes, the peaches, the corn, oats, pigs, the power plant, the lighting system, the way a new teacher was conducting a class in arithmetic or grammar. And this thing he kept up from day to day, whether he was in New York or Alabama. I myself have again and again, during the seven years in which I have had charge of the English work at Tuskegee Institute gotten notes making suggestions about a paragraph or a sentence in some student's talk or commencement address.

There was only one way under the sun he could do this. He regulated his life to the very second. He husbanded time most miserly, though he was prodigal with his energies. He had breakfasted and was out on horseback by 7:30 (he fancied the big iron gray pacer). His hour's ride was in a