The Negro Problem | Page 4

including carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting
harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and
brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical and architectural
drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning, sewing, dressmaking, millinery,
cooking, laundering, housekeeping, mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture,
dairying and stock raising, horticulture.
Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but they do actual work, by
means of which more than half of them pay some part or all of their expenses while
remaining at the school. Of the sixty buildings belonging to the school all but four were
almost wholly erected by the students as a part of their industrial education. Even the
bricks which go into the walls are made by students in the school's brick yard, in which,
last year, they manufactured two million bricks.
When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got spread among the people of
my race that the students who came to the Tuskegee school were to be taught industries
in connection with their academic studies, were, in other words, to be taught to work, I
received a great many verbal messages and letters from parents informing me 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 be able to say now that our people have very generally been
educated to a point where they see their own needs and conditions so clearly that it has
been several years since we have had a single protest from parents against the teaching of
industries, and there is now a positive enthusiasm for it. In fact, public sentiment among
the students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it would hardly
permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling to labor.
It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young man or woman
in a weak position. For example, I have seen a Negro girl taught by her mother to help
her in doing laundry work at home. Later, when this same girl was graduated from the
public schools or a high school and returned home she finds herself educated out of
sympathy with laundry work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in
keeping with the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we
cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her. What should
have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along with her academic
education thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundry work, so that she
could have put so much skill and intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted
out from the plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to
found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her children to take a
still more responsible position in life.
Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind--and this I think should be the policy of
all industrial schools--fitting students for occupations which would be open to them in
their home communities. Some years ago we noted the fact that there was beginning to be
a demand in the South for men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We
opened a dairy department in connection with the school, where a number of young men

could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy work. At present
we have calls--mainly from Southern white men--for twice as many dairymen as we are
able to supply. What is equally satisfactory, the reports which come to us indicate that
our young men are giving the highest satisfaction and are fast changing and improving
the dairy product in the communities into which they go. I use the dairy here as an
example. What I have said of this is equally true of many of the other industries which we
teach. Aside from the economic value of this work I cannot but believe, and my
observation confirms me in my belief, that as we continue to place Negro men and
women of intelligence, religion, modesty, conscience and skill in every community in the
South, who will prove by actual results their value to the community, I cannot but believe,
I say, that this will constitute a solution to many of the present political and social
difficulties.
Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the Negro work as he
worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my conception of industrial education. If
this training is worth anything to the Negro, it consists in teaching him how not to work,
but how