Part 4 (2/2)
Days pa.s.s all too quickly in work and study. After the supper at six, the girls in the normal cla.s.ses go to their rooms or the Carnegie Library for study, the girls in the preparatory cla.s.ses go to the study-hour, and those who have been working at the trades during the day spend two hours in night-school covering half as much ground as those in day-school, and consequently spend a longer period in school. At the ringing of the bell at half past eight all the girls form in line to pa.s.s to the Chapel for prayers.
School and work over for the day, every girl seems to lose her personality in her blue braided uniform, with her red tie and turnover on week-day evenings at Chapel, and her white ribbon on Sundays when she pa.s.ses the platform as she marches by out of the Chapel to her room. Her carriage at least identifies her cla.s.s-standing, and one may easily note the difference in the manner of her who has newly arrived and another who has been in school with the advantages of several years.
Friday afternoons mark an hour for lectures, girls' clubs, and circle entertainments. Sat.u.r.day evenings are spent optionally. Time for cla.s.s gymnastics or sewing or swimming is always spent pleasantly on schedule time during the week. Our girl attends the Christian Endeavor Sunday mornings at nine, Chapel at eleven, Sunday-school at one, and, after dinner is out of the way, spends the enforced quiet hour in her room from three until four o'clock reading. The band concert on the lawn calls all to listen, some walking, some sitting on the seats on the green, but all presenting a picturesque appearance in the blue skirts and white waists of the spring season.
Thus the days and weeks pa.s.s, mingled with the sorrows and joys of school-life, its encouragements and disappointments. The months and seasons come and go, and, before one is scarcely aware of the fact, the Commencement Week is here and the hundreds of young people whose lives have come in touch with one another pa.s.s on to their homes. Some go out as helpful workers, giving useful service to others; many will return to complete the course begun, but all, we hope, will give out the light that will not fail. Some are workers with ten talents, some with five, some with one; but all, we trust, will be using them for the upbuilding of the kingdom here on earth.
V
HAMPTON INSt.i.tUTE'S RELATION TO TUSKEGEE
BY ROBERT R. MOTON
In his eloquent address in May, 1903, at the memorial services of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Founder, and for twenty-five years Princ.i.p.al, of Hampton Inst.i.tute, Dr. Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton said: ”A few nights ago, while I was driving through the woods in Alabama, I discerned in the distance a large, bright fire. Driving to it, I soon found out that by the glow of this fire several busy hands were building a nice frame cottage, to replace a log cabin that had been the abode of the family for a quarter of a century. That fire was lighted by General Armstrong years ago. What does it matter that it was twenty-five years pa.s.sing through Hampton to Tuskegee and through the Tuskegee Conference to that lonely spot in those lonely woods! It was doing its work very effectually all the same, and will continue to do it through the years to come.”
The relations existing between Tuskegee Inst.i.tute and Hampton Inst.i.tute are much like those existing between a son and the father who has watched the growth and development of his child through the formative transition periods of his youth, and looks with pride upon him as he stands forth in the full bloom of manhood, enumerating successes already achieved, with large promise of greater and more far-reaching achievements for the immediate future. The child never reaches the point where he does not seek the approval and blessing of the parent, or where he refuses to accept advice and a.s.sistance if needed.
In the early days of Tuskegee Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton turned naturally and properly to Hampton for anything that was needed, as he so beautifully and repeatedly testifies in his autobiography, Up from Slavery. For a long time the men and women who helped him were from Hampton, more than fifty such having been there.
While there is a large number of Hampton graduates in the Industrial Departments of Tuskegee, the teaching force, especially in the Academic Department, represents a dozen or more of the best colleges and universities in this country. The same may be said of Hampton.
Up to about eight or ten years ago we at Hampton spoke of Tuskegee as a small Hampton, but ”small” no longer describes Tuskegee, and I doubt seriously if _large Hampton_ would be altogether proper.
While Tuskegee was founded on the Hampton plan, and has consistently followed that plan as far as possible, and while these two great ”Industrial Universities” are very much alike in spirit and purpose, they are, on the other hand, very dissimilar in external appearance as well as in internal conduct. Each sends out into the benighted districts of the South, and Hampton also into the Indian country of the West, hundreds of men and women who are living influences of civilization and Christianity in their deepest and most far-reaching sense, adding much to the solution of the perplexing questions with which the nation has to deal.
The conditions surrounding the two schools have necessitated certain differences in their evolution. The personnel of the two inst.i.tutions is different. Hampton has always been governed and controlled by white people, and its teachers have come from the best families of the North.
Tuskegee was founded by a Negro, and its teachers and officers have come from the best types of the American Negro and from the best schools opened to them. Hampton deals with a different cla.s.s of student material, including the Indian, who is almost as different in traits and characteristics from the Negro as he is in feature and origin. These are, in a sense, external differences which must of necessity affect the character and internal machinery of the two inst.i.tutions.
This is no reflection upon either school, for each is unique and complete in its way, and any marked ethnic change in the management of either would be unfortunate. Hampton is a magnificent ill.u.s.tration of Anglo-Saxon ideas in modern education. Tuskegee, on the other hand, is the best demonstration of Negro achievement along distinctly altruistic lines. In its successful work for the elevation and civilization of the children of the freedmen, it is also the most convincing evidence of the Negroes' ability to work together with mutual regard and mutual helpfulness. When Tuskegee was started there was a serious question as to whether Negroes could in any large measure combine for business or educational purposes. The only cooperative inst.i.tutions that had been successful among them were the Church and, perhaps, the secret societies.
In material development, in the rapid and steadily improving accession of student material, in enlarging powers for greater usefulness, in influence upon the educational methods of the country and the civilized world, and in the sympathy and respect it has gained for the Negro through the writings and speeches of its Founder and Princ.i.p.al, the Tuskegee Inst.i.tute has without doubt pa.s.sed beyond the expectations of those who were most sanguine about its future.
The Tuskegee torch, from the Hampton fire started so many years ago by General Armstrong, has spread and is spreading light to thousands of homes and communities throughout the South, and is the greatest pride and glory of Hampton Inst.i.tute, and a constant source of inspiration and encouragement to the devoted men and women who have always made Hampton's work possible.
At the conclusion of an address in a Northern city in the interest of Hampton, in which I had quoted Dr. Curry's saying that, ”if Hampton had done nothing more than to give us Booker Was.h.i.+ngton, its history would be immortality,” a New England lady of apparently good circ.u.mstances and well informed, in the kindness of her heart, took me to task for distorting my facts in saying that Tuskegee had grown out of Hampton.
She was sure that it was just the other way--that Hampton was an offshoot of Tuskegee. She certainly could not have paid a higher tribute to Hampton, and likewise to Tuskegee.
For the past few years Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's deserved popularity and prominence have brought Tuskegee conspicuously and constantly before the public. This has in no sense been a disadvantage to Hampton, but has been a distinct gain in enabling Hampton to point to the foremost man of the Negro race, and to the largest and most interesting and in many ways the best-managed inst.i.tution of the race, as the best and most conspicuous product of the peculiar kind of education for which Hampton stands.
While Tuskegee is, perhaps, in many respects, better known than Hampton, its antecedent, Hampton, is without doubt much better known and more highly thought of because of the existence of Tuskegee.
Tuskegee in its present state of development would be one of the marvels of the age, even if the personality of its Princ.i.p.al were left out of consideration.
Two thousand Negroes who are scarcely a generation removed from bondage, being trained, disciplined, controlled by 200 or more of the same racial type; 2,000 Negroes being educated, morally, industrially, intellectually; an industrial university with 100 large buildings well equipped and beautifully laid-off grounds, with a hum and bustle of industry, scientifically and practically conducted by a race considered as representing the lowest ethnic type, upsetting the theories of many well-meaning people who believe the Negroes incapable of maintaining themselves in this civilization, incapable of uniting in any successful endeavor without being under the direct personal control of the dominant Aryan--this is one of the greatest achievements of the race during its years of freedom.
Hampton, though a dozen years older, the pioneer in industrial education, equally well equipped, quite as well conducted, doing as great a work in the elevation of the races it represents, and holding just as important a place in the scheme of modern education, is not so interesting or so wonderful, because its conception and execution are the product of Aryan thought and Aryan ingenuity. New ideas, new discoveries, new inventions and organizations, new methods and new inst.i.tutions, have been conspicuous among the white race for a thousand years. General Armstrong's wisdom and foresight were truly wonderful, as indeed are also those of his worthy successor, Dr. H. B. Frissell, under whose direction the school's influence and usefulness have steadily increased, and along lines that General Armstrong would approve; but had Hampton been founded and brought to its present state of proficiency by a Negro, and its dominating force been of the African race, it would be a more wonderful and interesting inst.i.tution. In other words, the white race has long since pa.s.sed its experimental period. It now is the standard of measurement for all other races. The Negro's achievements, then, are considered largely with reference to the impression which they make upon the race of whose civilization and government he is a part.
<script>