And all this life and love and strife and failure,—is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of somefaint-dawning day?

Life and Death.

Uncle Birdwas grayer, and his eyes did not see so well, but he was still jovial.

The road and the stream were battling for mastery, and thestream had the better of it.

impuden

As I sat by the spring and looked on the Old and the New I felt glad, very glad,and yet . . .

The crazy foundation stones still marked the former site of my poor little cabin,and not far away, on six weary boulders, perched a jaunty board house, perhaps twenty by thirtyfeet, with three windows and a door that locked.

osie grew thin and silent

And their weak wings beat against their barriers,—barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposedeven a whim.

from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and,above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity.

wended

how“mean” some of the white folks were.

Often, to keep the peace, I must go where life was less lovely; for instance,‘Tildy’s mother was incorrigibly dirty, Reuben’s larder was limited seriously, and herds ofuntamed insects wandered over the Eddingses’ beds.

saffron

I lovedmy school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous.We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of theworld beyond the hill.

haughty-eyed

The longing to know, to be a studentin the great school at Nashville, hovered like a star above this child-woman amid her work andworry, and she studied doggedly.

There was an entrance where adoor once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks between the logs served aswindows. Furniture was scarce. A pale blackboard crouched in the corner. My desk was made ofthree boards, reinforced at critical points, and my chair, borrowed from the landlady, had to bereturned every night. Seats for the children—these puzzled me much.

She had about her a certainfineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to makelife broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers.

that but once sincethe war had a teacher been there; that she herself longed to learn,—and thus she ran on, talkingfast and loud, with much earnestness and energy.

There came a day when all the teachers left the Institute and began the hunt for schools.

white teachers inthe morning, Negroes at night.

“We hold these truthsto be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowedby their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these arelife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none ofus are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs

his future rise dependsprimarily on his own efforts

Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that inseveral instances he has opposed movements in the South which wereunjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabamaconstitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in otherways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemesand unfortunate happenings.

the ignorant Southernerhates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-mak-ers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in hisupward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to rise.

Wehave no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for aharvest of disaster to our children, black and white.

Negroes mustinsist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessaryto modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and thatblack boys need education as well as white boys.

Theydo not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to beeducated, will come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and

This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of concil-iation toward the white South

pampering by all agencies of socialpower from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ.

small-minded opponents

Is itpossible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effectiveprogress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, madea servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for developingtheir exceptional men?

manly self-respect is worth more than landsand houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect,or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing

impetus

But Booker T.Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two,—acompromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro

Self-assertion,especially in political lines, was the main programme

cowed into submission

y 1830 slaveryseemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughlycowed into submission.

The influenceof all of these attitudes at various times can be traced in the history of theAmerican Negro, and in the evolution of his successive leaders.

that curious double movementwhere real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retro-gression.

It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence andparalysis of effort, and others toburst into speech so passionatelyand intemperately as to lose listeners

teering as he must between so manydiverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.

Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy;

“If that is all you and your race ask, take it.”

In the North the feeling has several times forced itself intowords, that Mr. Washington’s counsels of submission overlooked certainelements of true manhood, and that his educational programme was un-necessarily narrow.

In the South especially has he had to walkwarily to avoid the harshest judgments

So Mr. Washington’s cult

shrewd

This “Atlanta Compromise” is by all odds the most notable thing inMr. Washington’s career. The South interpreted it in different ways: theradicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil andpolitical equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived workingbasis for mutual understanding

Our pathway must be up through the soil, up throughswamps, up through forests, up through the streams, therocks, through commerce, education, and religion.

these things, upon their elementaryside are absolutely vital to the worth and success ofhundreds of thousands of these people of theNegro race, and yet our whole educational systemhas practically ignored them

practical and industrialelements in educational training.

Many seem to think that industrial education is meant tomake the Negro work as he worked in the days of slavery.

who will prove by actual resultstheir value to the community,

The home which she would then havebeen able to nd by the results of her work would haveenabled her to help her children to take a still moreresponsible position in life.

yet not able to nd anything to do which seems inkeeping with the cost and character of her education.

Ireceived a great many verbal messages and letters fromparents informing me that they wanted their childrentaught books, but not how to work.

Of the sixty buildingsbelonging to the school all but four were almost whollyerected by the students as a part of their industrialeducation.

in thirty–three trades and industries includingcarpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting,harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding,shoemaking, brickmasonry and brickmaking, plastering,sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical andarchitectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering,canning, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking,laundering, housekeeping, mattress making, basketry,nursing, agriculture, dairying and stock raising, andhorticulture

Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began tocombine industrial training with mental and moralculture.

Iplead for industrial education and development for theNegro not because I want to cramp him, but because Iwant to free him.

It is impossible for usto attach too much importance to this aspect of thesubject.

industry the foundation

We want more than the mereperformance of mental gymnastics.

circumscribe

women who could converse intelligently upon abstrusesubjects, and yet could not tell how to improve thecondition of the poorly cooked and still more poorlyserved bread and meat which they and their families

I wasamazed to nd that it was almost impossible to nd inthe whole country an educated colored man who couldteach the making of clothing

’liberaleducation,’

The charge is often brought against themembers of my race–and too often justly, I confess —that they are found leaving the country districts andocking into the great cities where temptations are morefrequent and harder to resist, and where the Negropeople too often become demoralized.

As a generation began to pass,those who had been trained as mechanics in slaverybegan to disappear by death, and gradually it began to berealized that there were few to take their places.

the value of the industrial training given by theplantations was overlooked

but in the manufacture oftobacco he became a skilled and procient workman, andin this, up to the present time, in the South, holds thelead in the large tobacco manufactories

which was a curse to both races

hrough all those years theSouthern white man did business with the Negro in a waythat no one else has done business with him. In mostcases if a Southern white man wanted a house built heconsulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and aboutthe actual building of the structure.

mental training

In a certain wayevery slave plantation in the South was an industrialschool.

the two races at the coming offreedom in this country.

It has been necessary for the Negro to learn thedierence between being worked and working–to learnthat being worked meant degradation, while workingmeans civilization

necessary for him to learn that all races that have gotupon their feet have done so largely by laying aneconomic foundation,