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Lot 252
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Booker T. Washington on African-American Education, 16pp Autograph Manuscript, from "Lynchings in the South," to "at Tuskegee"
Booker T. Washington on African-American Education, 16pp Autograph Manuscript, from "Lynchings in the South," to "at Tuskegee"
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Description:

Washington Booker



Booker T. Washington on African-American Education, 16pp Autograph Manuscript, from "Lynchings in the South," to "at Tuskegee"

 

16pp autograph manuscript, undated, inscribed overall by black educator and activist Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). The pages are numbered 2-7 (two are numbered "5"); 22; 24; 28; and 29 (with additional unnumbered page on reverse); and four are unnumbered. Roughly one third of the sheets are written on the reverse of stationery partly printed with "Tuskege Normal and Industrial Institute. / (Incorporated) / For the Training of Colored Young Men and Women" letterhead. Very good condition. Age toning throughout, a few discolored stains and holes, and scattered professional repairs. Each page measures approximately 8.5" x 11". An estimated 1,540 words in Booker T. Washington's hand, showing his working process in championing Civil Rights. A great piece of history!

 

Washington's notes were possibly for a speech or lecture. He later copiously revised the notes with cross-outs and word changes.  See representative excerpts below, with unchanged spelling:

 

"Education increases one's wants - what if it does not increase the ability to supply those increased wants - Before one is educated [one] is satisfied - with one room, home made bed, jam pots…shirt, broken shoes, hickory stick, and an old banjo. After - Large house, comforts, pictures, piano, broad cloth, patent leather shoes…hat, store cane, kid gloves, cuffs and collars, neck ties-cuff buttons, - wife and children. Now if wants increase faster than ability - the result is that there is either unhapiness or dishonesty - Hampton meets this difficulty.

 

To the front, opportunities vs. wrongs, Never seen a colored man prepared to fill a place, but when the place was not ready before the man was. Lynchings in South. Bob Toombs son in law" (unnumbered)

 

"Industrial. How not to work. / Negro works / Indiana farms, / Competition / Alladin oven / Hoffman and butter, / Dignifying labor {white washing… / stepping stones / … / Production and Consumption, / tooth picks, / Grading, / 50 years scientific and ind[ustrial] ed[ucation] / 10 hrs. vs 40 hrs. / Old man Reassuring / Positions to be filled { Not oratory, / Long suffering /" (p. 2)

 

"-- better teaching than the son of the president of the United States received 50 years ago.

 

For the last 50 years education has tended in one direction - the cementing of mind to matter - 50 years ago the child 4 years old counted one, two, three, abstractly, now he counts one apple, two blocks - 50 years ago he learned to read by pronouncing abstract characters 'A b c' - now he reads at once not about a dog but some special and tangible dog. Now when we study chemistry instead of taking a book and going into a class room and study about something we go into the laborytory and study the thing. In botany we are not content to study about the plant, but we study the plant must see and handle and the same thing is true through all the field of biology.

 

Now what is industrial education? The application of mind to matter, [an]d applied to conquering the forces of nature - And here let me dispose of a very common error that industrial education is opposed to library education - opposed to the highest mental development - So far from this is my position that if I could choose the subjects to receive an industrial education I would choose a college graduate every time -the more mind there is to be applied to matter, the greater the results. I agree fully with the poet: 'Had I the heights +c -'

 

It takes as strong a mind to construct a Corliss engine as it does to write a Greek Grammar. I plead with you not for less mental development but for its use in the physical world, he is in school. No matter how much a man while [in] school may love matter theoretically, there is danger of his departing from his love if he gets too far away from school before the marr[iag]e takes place. You know how it is or you will know. It is a good deal like college love. If you don't get the girl while your in school or very soon after the chances are that you will lose her just as many a poor fellow has done, So at Tuskegee while he is in school we marry the young man to the farm or printing offices. We try to…so dove tail the library in with the industrial that one can not be separated from the other.

 

(As a race there are two things that we must learn to do.)" (p. 3-5)

 

"It has also been our endeavor in every…to teach how to gain the respect and confidence of the white people among whom they are to live for all time - to do this we constantly remind them that must learn to do something as well or better than any one else.

 

When I first began this work at Tuskegee an[d] the idea got spread [to] our people that the students were to be taught industry in connection with their academic studies, I got a great many verbal messages and letters from parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught books, but not how to work. This protest went on for three or four years, but I am glad to say that our people have gradually been educated to the point

 

/ Great rebound from study.

 

where they see their own condition and needs so clearly that it has been 8 years since we have had a single protest from parents or students against the teaching of industry, and there is a positive enthusiasm over it. In fact the public sentiment among the students is so strong that it would not permit a student to remain in the grounds who was unwilling to labor.

 

/ Nothing about food." (p. 5-6)

 

"The persons who have recently bought land or are engaged in buying homes.

 

Studying man

 

The great thing to be kept in mind in our educational work in the South is to make it effective as soon as possible in relieving the conditions of the ignorant masses. With this in view I have recently spent several weeks with the senior class in studying men instead of books. Each member of the class has gone into the country and studied a family - finding out the number and age of the family - whether in debt or free from debt, whether or not the crop was mortgaged, whether the land was owned or rented, how many acres cultivated, the kinds of crops, whether or not it was one crop or a variety, the kind [and] amount of food consumed, whether or not the cultivation was poor or good, the number of fowls, cattle, pigs, dogs, cats +c owned, the educational condition and opportunities, the moral and religious condition-noting especially to what extent poverty effected the moral and religious…" (p. 7)

 

"…and yet - each citizen in this county is expected to share the burdens and privileges of our democratic form of government just as intelligently and conscientiously as the citizens of your beloved Kings County - a vote in this county in a great national crises means as much as a vote in the city of Boston - crime in this county is an arrow arrived at the heart of the republic as is this crime committed in your own streets. Do you know that a single school house built this year in a town near Boston to shelter some three hundred pupils has cost more for [the] building alone that will be spent this year for the education including building…teachers for the whole of the colored school population in Alabama? These illustrations my friends so…" (p. 22)

 

"…for it is a pretty hard thing to tell how they are going to vote or whether they vote at all - the greatest injury (old man) (voting fore breakfast) / Hard to make a good Christian of a hungry man. Rid of world - Give me Jesus.

 

My remarks thus far have had reference mainly to my own race. But there is another side, the more experience I have and the longer I studied this question, the more I am convince[d] that it is not so much a question as to what you will do with the Negro as what the Negro will do with you and your civilization - In considering this side of the subject I thank God that I have grown to the point where I

 

(Let education this year reach lowest)." (p. 24)

 

"Can we so control science, art, literature is to make it to such an extent or means rather than an end, that the lowest and most unfortunate of Gods creatures shall be lifted up, enobled, and glorified-shall be free men instead of slaves of narrow sympathies and wrong customs.

 

(Bakers Case)

 

I recite this incident not for the purpose merely of condemning a wrong done a member of my race, No, no not that. I mention the case not for the sake of the one but for the sake of 400. Here were 400 and more picked young men representing the flower of our country who had passed through our common schools, and were preparing themselves and public expense to defend the honor of our country. And yet with grammar, reading, and, arithmetic in the public schools, and with all the lessons in the arts of war, in the principles of courage principles of physical courage - the whole system of education in the public schools and Anapolis seems to have totally failed to so prepare a single young man for real life that he could be brave enough, Christian enough - American enough to take this poor defenseless black boy by the hand in open day light and let the world know that he was his friend. Education whether of black man or white man, gives a man physical courage to stand in front of the common, and facts to give him moral courage to stand up in defense of right and justice is a failure." (p. 28-29)

 

"It is with an ignorant race as with a child, it assumes it first, the superficial, the ornamental, the…the signs of progress instead of the reality. Thy ignorant race is tempted, attempts to jump at our hand to the position that it has required years of hard patient struggle for others to reach. We should no more seek to grant all…" (unnumbered)

 

"On way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of recommendation from an officer of a minority organization who had become somewhat acquainted with me some years previous. He not only refused to give the letter but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once and not make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would never get more than enough to pay my traveling expenses. I thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.

 

The first place I went to the North, was Northampton Mass[achusetts], where I spent nearly a half day in looking for a colored family with whom I could board, never dreaming that my hotel would admit me. I was greatly surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel." (unnumbered)

 

"Not very long ago a white citizen of South Carolina expressed himself in public to this effect." (unnumbered)

 

Booker T. Washington was born a Virginia slave in 1856. He showed considerable academic promise, and worked his way through college. In 1881, the 25-year-old Washington was appointed head of what would become one of the most important historically black colleges in the United States, Alabama's Tuskegee Institute. Under Washington's 34-year-long tenure at Tuskegee, the teacher's college raised a huge endowment and produced thousands of highly qualified black instructors.

 

Washington's approach towards race relations, which advocated for gradual change through accommodation and collaboration, clashed with younger, more militant black activists like W.E.B. DuBois. Nevertheless, Washington's lecture series, writing campaigns, and work with wealthy whites advanced the cause of achieving racial equality.

 



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