Part 9

There are a number of ways for extending the school term. One is for each parent to pay ten, fifteen, twenty-five or fifty cents each month during the whole time the school is in session. Frequently parents who cannot pay in cash can let the teacher have eggs, chickens, butter, sweet potatoes, corn or some other kind of produce which will help to supply the teacher with food. Another plan is for each farmer to set aside a portion of land and give all that is raised upon it to the school. Still another plan, and one that is being successfully carried out in at least one place, and one that I think much of, is for the teacher to secure, either by renting or purchase, a small tract of land--say from two to five acres--and let the children cultivate this land while they are attending school. If, in this way, three bales of cotton can be raised, and a variety of vegetables and grain also, the produce can be sold and the school term extended from three months to six or seven months.

Some parents may object to this at first, but they will soon see that it is better to let the school close at one o'clock or two o'clock in the afternoon, so that the children may work on the school land for an hour or two, and in this way keep the school open six or seven months, than to let it close entirely at the end of three months. There is another advantage in this latter plan. The teacher can in this way teach the students, in a practical way, better methods of farming. Short talks on the principles of agriculture are worth much more to them than time spent in committing to memory the names of mountain peaks in Central Africa. Very often there is enough land right around the school-house for the pupils to cultivate.

In every case where it is possible, the teacher should buy a home in the community, and make his home in every way a model for those of the people who live around him. The teacher should cultivate a farm, or follow some trade while not teaching. This not only helps him, but sets a good example for the people in the community. If the teacher be a woman, there are few communities where she cannot add much to her income by sewing, dressmaking or poultry-raising.

THE CULTIVATION OF STABLE HABITS

I am going to speak with you a few minutes this evening upon the matter of stability. I want you to understand when you start out in school, that no individual can accomplish anything unless he means to stick to what he undertakes. No matter how many possessions he may have, no matter how much he may have in this or that direction, no matter how much learning or skill of hand he may possess, an individual cannot succeed unless, at the same time, he possesses that quality which will enable him to stick to what he undertakes. In a word he is not to be jumping from this thing to that thing.

That is the reason why so many ministers fail. They preach awhile, and then jump to something else. They do not stick to one thing. It is the same with many lawyers and doctors. They do not stick to what they undertake. Many business men fail for the same reason. When an individual gets a reputation--no matter what he has undertaken--of not having the quality of sticking to a thing until he succeeds in reaching the end, that reputation nullifies the influence for good of the better traits of his character in every direction. It is said of him that he is unstable.

I want you to begin your school life with the idea that you are going to stick to whatever you undertake until you have completed it. I take it for granted that all of you have come here with that idea in mind; that before you came here you sat down and talked the matter over with your father and mother, read over the circulars giving information about the school, and then deliberately decided that this institution was the one whose course of study you wished to complete. I take it for granted that you have come here with that end in view, and I want to say to you now, that you will injure yourselves, your parents, and the institution--and you will hurt your own reputation--unless, after having come here with the determination to succeed, you remain here for that purpose, and remain for the full time, until you receive your diploma. I hope every individual here, every young man and woman at the school, is here with the determination that he or she will not give up the struggle until the object aimed at has been attained.

You are at a stage now, when, if you begin jumping about here and there, if you begin in this course of study and then go to that course of study, you will very likely be jumping about from one thing to another all your life. You must make up your minds, after coming here, to do well whatever you undertake. This is a good rule not only to begin your school life with, but also to begin your later life with.

Perhaps I was never more interested than I was last evening in Montgomery, while standing on one of the streets there for an hour. I seldom stand on any street for an hour, but last night I did stand on that street for an hour, in front of a large, beautiful store that is owned by Mr. J. W. Adams, and watched the notice taken of the display of millinery made in his store windows by two girls that finished their academic and industrial courses at this school--Miss Jemmie Pierce and Miss Lydia Robinson. The first Monday in October is always the day in Montgomery for what they call the millinery openings; on that day the stores which handle such goods all make a great display of ladies' hats and bonnets. It was surprising and interesting to note how these two girls had entered a great city like Montgomery and had taken entire charge of the millinery department in a large store. Hundreds of people stopped to comment favourably upon the taste that was displayed in the decoration of those windows.

Now, all this work was done by two Tuskegee graduates. And the complimentary remarks that were made came not only from coloured people but from white people as well. No one could tell from the windows of that store whether it was a coloured or a white establishment. Many of the white ladies who were standing there did not know that they were standing in front of a store that was owned by a black man. It had none of the usual earmarks about it. Usually when you go into coloured establishments you see grease on the doors or on the counters; or you see this sign or that sign that this is a coloured man's establishment. Those of you here who are going to go into business after you leave school do not want to have any such earmarks about your establishments. Such a store as that of Mr. Adams is the kind of a store to have.

Now, these two young women have made a reputation for themselves. They went into the millinery division while they were here, and they remained until they graduated. One of them, I believe had not finished in the millinery department when she received her academic diploma, and so she came back last year and took a postgraduate course in millinery. It is interesting and encouraging to see these two young women succeeding in their work, and it all comes from their determination to succeed, and because they had sense enough to finish what they had undertaken.

That is the lesson that you all want to learn. If you do not learn it now, in a large degree you will be failures in life. You want to be like these young women. You want to fight it out. Now if you mean to get your diploma, you are going to have a hard time. Some of you are going to be without shoes, without a hat, without proper clothing of any kind. You will get discouraged because you have not as nice a dress or as nice a hat as this person or that person. I would not give a snap of my finger for a person who would give up for that. The thing for you to do is to fight it out. Get something in your head, and don't worry about what you can get to put on it. The clothes will come afterward.

You are going to be greatly discouraged sometimes, but if you will heed the lesson of fighting out what you have undertaken, that same disposition will follow you all through life, and you will get a reputation, because people will say of you that there is a person who sticks to whatever he or she undertakes. One of the saddest things in life is to see an individual who has grown to old age, with no profession, with no calling whatever from which he is sure of getting an independent living. It is sad to see such individuals without money, without homes, in their old age, simply because they did not learn the lesson of saving money and getting for themselves a beautiful home when they ought to have done this. And so, all through life, we can point to many people who have not learned this lesson--that for whatever they undertake they must pay the price which the world asks of them if they would succeed. If we are going to succeed we must pay the price for what we get; and he who accomplishes the most, accomplishes it in an humble and straightforward way, by sticking to what he has undertaken. He who does this finds in the end that he has achieved a tremendous success.

WHAT YOU OUGHT TO DO

It is comparatively easy to perform almost any kind of work, but the value of any work is in having it performed so that the desired results may be most speedily reached, and in having the means with which the worker labours arranged so as to meet certain ends. It is the constant problem of those organs which have charge of the well-being of the body, to cause digestion to take place, so that what is nourishing in the food may reach every part of the body, not only the portions near the organs in which digestion takes place, but also the most extreme parts of the different members.

Just so it is the aim of all persons who are accustomed to making public addresses to try to make those who are far away from them hear them as well as those who sit near. In this same way, it seems to me more and more every year, it is going to be the main object of all our schools in the South to make their influence felt most forcibly among those who are remote from them. How can we reach the masses who are remote--I mean remote from educational advantages and from opportunities for encouragement and enlightenment? The problem in the rural districts is difficult because of the vastness of the number to be reached, and of the frequent difficulty of reaching them. We must keep this fact before us, then; that institutions of this kind are of little value unless they can pave the way to make the results of their work felt among the masses of the people who are especially remote from these institutions.

It is a fact, as most of you know, that we very seldom meet with a thoroughly well-educated teacher in the rural districts, in spite of the passing of over thirty years since we became men and women. You know, too, that the same thing is, in too large a measure, true of the ministry. The responsibility for reaching these people, for affecting them for good, rests upon the young men and young women who are being educated in these Southern institutions to-day.

What are you going to do as your part towards reaching these people, towards carrying to them the light which they need so much and so earnestly long for? Difficult as this problem is, it is not a discouraging one, because these people are ready to follow the light as soon as they are sure that the right kind of light is set up before them. You very seldom meet with a coloured man who is not conscious of his ignorance, and who is not anxious to get up as soon as he finds himself down. In this respect the problem is encouraging.

One of the ways in which the problem is serious is with respect to labour. In almost every city and town in the South a large proportion of the coloured people are shiftless so far as manual labour is concerned, although I think there is already improvement. The masses of our people are given to thrift and industry, and to unremitting toil, in their way. The hard thing about it, the discouraging thing, is that they do not know how to realize on the results of their toil; because they have no education and little idea of industrial development, they do not know how to make their work tell for what it ought to. As a general thing the people--those in the country especially--do not ask anybody to come and give them food, clothing and houses; all they ask is for some person, some honest, upright man or woman who is interested in their welfare, to come among them and show them how to direct their efforts and their energy, show them how best to realize on the results of their work, so that they can supply their own moral, religious and material needs and educate their children.

And you will find that wherever this institution, Hampton, Talladega, Fisk, Atlanta or any other, can put in the midst of the people young men and young women who will settle down among them and make their lives object lessons for the people--plant a good school and convince the people that the teacher has settled down there to stay through encouraging or discouraging circumstances--you will find that such a teacher will not only be encouraged, but will be supported materially. In every way there will be an opportunity for that person to revolutionize the community. That opportunity is open to you. It is an opportunity which is being opened to no other set of young men and young women who are being educated anywhere else in the world. Are you going to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of this opportunity?

I was talking with a gentleman last night who has recently spent some time in one of the Southern states, and he told me that in hardly any country district in that state was there a public school which is kept open longer than four months. He tells me that the average salary in some of those districts is little more than fifteen dollars a month. In another state the condition of the people is about the same. In our own state perhaps the conditions are worse even than in the states referred to. In some counties in Alabama the people are this year receiving no money to run their schools more than three and a half months in the year, except, of course, in the cities and towns. In some counties the teachers are being paid only twelve to twenty dollars, and there are possibly some where the teachers get not more than ten dollars from the state fund.

I was talking with a gentleman from another state not long ago about the material condition of the people in that state, and he told me that so far as their industrial life is concerned, the masses are in a very bad condition this year; that they are too often at the mercy of the landowners--I refer to the persons who run the large plantations--and that the same thing is largely true of all of the cotton-raising states. I need not go on to describe to you the moral results that must inevitably follow such a condition of things. I need not take your time to tell you that there can be little morality or religion among people who are so ignorant as these people, and who do not know where they are going to get anything to eat. It is needless to describe the train of moral evils that must follow such conditions as these.

What I have attempted to describe to you as existing to-day in these country districts may not be very encouraging, but it seems to me that every young man and young woman who has enjoyed the privileges afforded by this and by other institutions in the South--I speak especially now to the members of the next graduating class--should feel that such conditions as these present one of the most inviting fields possible for labour. Every young man and woman here is being educated by money that is given by others. None of you are paying for the education you are receiving. You might pay for your board, but you would have to do that elsewhere. Every one must pay for his or her own clothing, but the cost of buildings, rent, tuition, expenses and other matters pertaining to the institution you do not pay. Your education, in a large measure, is a gift from the public, and it seems to me that one of the first things you should do is to repay, to as large an extent as is possible with your services, what has been spent in giving you so large a part of your education.

This is a debt that you owe not only to yourselves, but to our race and our country. It is a religious debt as well, that you be willing to go out into these country districts and suffer, as it were, for a few years, until you can get a foothold, so that you can plant yourselves in one of these dark communities. I feel sure that you would not have to suffer very long. I believe that the hardest part of the struggle would come during the first two or three years. When you can convince the people that you are in earnest, the battle is won. When you can convince them that it is cheaper to keep an educated teacher than to keep one who is ignorant, and when you can once demonstrate your value to them not only in an educational respect but industrially and morally, the battle is won, and these people will stand by you and support you. In many cases, it is my belief, you will eventually find yourselves better supported financially than you would if you had gone to work in cities and large towns. No matter from which side you look at this problem, good is bound to come from it.

And while we are talking about the reward that will come as a result of your services, let me tell you that no greater satisfaction can come to any one than that which you will get from the worship and praise which will come to you from these old mothers and fathers who will be benefited by your services. I know of instances where teachers have gone and planted themselves in these country districts who, even if they do not make such a very great success financially, receive the love and most sincere worship from year to year, because of the feeling of gratitude which the people among whom they have settled have for them on account of their having helped them in so many ways.

This same kind of pioneer work had to be done all over the world before the right kind of civilization was planted. It was such work as this that the people did who settled the great West, where they were deprived of the comforts of life. The people who planted Oberlin College in what was then a wilderness had to suffer many such hardships. The men who went to Washington, Oregon, and California and established what are now large cities there, had to suffer many such hardships; they had to suffer just what you must and should suffer. Are you going to suffer for your own people until they can receive the light which they so much need? If the young men and women before me have the right kind of stuff in them they will do this. Most certainly do I hope that you are going to carry out into these dark communities the light which you receive here from day to day. I hope you will fill these districts with men and women of education. When you go out from here with your diploma, whether it be next May or at some other time, resolve to plant yourself in one community and stay there. No matter what your work is, you cannot accomplish much if you become the wandering Jew. Find the community where you think you can use your life to the best advantage, and then stay there.

[In the time that has elapsed since this talk was given, I think there has been improvement in many of the country schools in the South, and in the general condition of the people as described to me then.--B. T. W.]

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

I have referred in a general way, before this, when I have been speaking to you, to the fact that each one of you ought to feel an interest in whatever task is set you to do here over and above the mere bearing which that task has on your own life. I wish to speak more specifically to-night on this subject--on what I may term the importance of your feeling a sense of personal responsibility not only for the successful performance of every task set you, but for the successful outcome of every worthy undertaking with which you come in contact.

You ought to realize that your actions will not affect yourselves alone. In this age it is almost impossible for a man to live for himself alone. On every side our lives touch those of others; their lives touch ours. Even if it were possible to live otherwise, few would wish to. A narrow life, a selfish life, is almost sure to be not only unprofitable but unhappy. The happy people and the successful people are those who go out of their way to reach and influence for good as many persons as they can. In order to do this, though, in order best to fit one's self to live this kind of life, it is important that certain habits be acquired; and an essential one of these is the habit of realizing one's responsibility to others.

Your actions will affect other people in one way or another, and you will be responsible for the result. You ought always to remember this, and govern yourselves accordingly. Suppose it is the matter of the recitation of a lesson, for instance. Some one may say: "It is nobody's business but my own if I fail in a recitation. Nobody will suffer but me." This is not so. Indirectly you injure your teacher also, for while a conscientious, hard-working teacher ought not to be blamed for the failures of pupils who do not learn simply because they do not want to, or are too lazy to try, it is generally the case that a teacher's reputation gains or loses as his or her class averages high or low. And each failure in recitation, for whatever cause, brings down the average. Then, too, you are having an influence upon your classmates, even if it be unconscious. There is hardly ever a student who is not observed by some one at some time as an example. "There is such a boy," some other student says to himself. "He has failed in class ever so many times, and still he gets along. It can't make much difference if I fail once." And as a result he neglects his duty, and does fail.

The same thing is true of work in the industrial departments. Too many students try to see how easily they can get through the day, or the work period, and yet not get into trouble. Or even if they take more interest than this, they care for their work only for the sake of what they can get out of it for themselves, either as pay, or as instruction which will enable them to work for pay at some later time. Now there ought to be a higher impulse behind your efforts than that. Each student ought to feel that he or she has a personal responsibility to do each task in the very best manner possible. You owe this not only to your fellow-students, your teachers, the school, and the people who support the institution, but you owe it even more to yourselves. You owe it to yourselves because it is right and honest, because nothing less than this is right and honest, and because you never can be really successful and really happy until you do study and work and live in this way.

I have been led to speak specifically on this subject to-night on account of two occurrences here which have come to my notice. One of these illustrates the failure on the part of students to feel this sense of responsibility to which I have referred. The other affords an illustration of the possession by a student of a feeling of personal interest and personal responsibility which has been very gratifying and encouraging. The first incident, I may say, occurred some months ago. It is possible that the students who were concerned in it may not be here now or, if they are, that it would not happen again. I certainly hope not.