Part 18 (2/2)
We were cla.s.smates at Tuskegee four years, and graduated together. She died in 1894 at Inst.i.tute, W. Va. Our long a.s.sociation and acquaintance made us understand each other even before we were married. Having become a Christian before myself, she had much to do with my conversion while I was a student. She was a great help to me in many ways, and through her economy I was able to begin the purchase of my first property. Portia, the oldest and only child now living of the three children born to us, is in the Little Girls' Home at Knoxville College, Tenn. In 1897 I was married to Miss Florence Lovett, a graduate of Storer College, Harpers Ferry, W. Va. She shares my burdens, and is in every way a part of whatever success I am able to achieve. Four children have been born to us.
After resigning my position as commandant and head of the night-school at Tuskegee, I spent a few weeks visiting relatives, and then returned to Marietta. Here I worked at my trade in a carriage-shop, where a great deal of machine-work was done for two furniture factories and a planing-mill. Much of my time was spent in repairing machinery and making bits and knives for the factories.
While at home I tried to make myself a part of the people in a helpful way. I lived with my parents about two miles from the town. On my father's farm was a church, the ground for which had been given by my father. I was elected superintendent of the Sunday-school of this church, and filled this position as long as I remained there. Soon after the Sunday-school was started it occurred to me that the young people of the community could be greatly helped by a literary society.
With the aid of others I organized a society and was elected its president. We met every Friday night at the house of some member. It was the custom to meet at different places, so that the long distances necessary to walk would be equally shared by all. Even by this arrangement some had to walk three and four miles, but the pleasure and benefit derived from attending the society repaid us for the trouble.
After I had been at my home about a year, I received a letter from Mr.
Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton requesting that I write to Mr. J. Edwin Campbell, Princ.i.p.al of the West Virginia Colored Inst.i.tute, then located near Farm, W. Va. Enclosed with Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's letter was one Mr. Campbell had written, asking that a Tuskegee graduate be named to take the position of Superintendent of Mechanics. This t.i.tle has since been changed to Superintendent of Mechanical Industries. On January 3, 1893, I arrived at the West Virginia Colored Inst.i.tute and entered upon my duties, and have held the position ever since.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STARTING A NEW BUILDING.
Student masons laying the foundation in brick.]
In the early summer of 1898 Mr. J. H. Hill, who was then princ.i.p.al, resigned to accept a Lieutenancy in a company of United States Volunteers. During the interim following the resignation of Mr. Hill and the appointment of Mr. J. McHenry Jones, the present princ.i.p.al, I was placed in charge of the school by the Board of Regents. Mr. Jones was elected princ.i.p.al September 21, 1898.
Until the fall of 1898 my duties were many and varied, as I had no a.s.sistance in carrying on the industrial work of the school. I taught blacksmithing, carpentering, and mechanical drawing. Besides this, I have had to put the sewerage system into the inst.i.tution, and the heating apparatus into several of the school buildings. Still, a part of my time in 1894 was devoted to teaching in the literary department. My work now, while as exacting as ever, is more along the line of superintending the mechanical industries and in teaching mechanical drawing.
The school has grown, since my coming here, from 3 teachers and 30 students to a faculty of 18 teachers and 187 students. There are 6 instructors in the mechanical department for boys. We give instruction in carpentry, printing, blacksmithing, brick masonry, plastering, wheelwrighting, and mechanical drawing. These industries are housed in a building--the ”A. B. White Trades Building”--that cost $35,000.
In concluding this sketch, I repeat with emphasis what I said in the beginning: Whatever my accomplishments may be, the credit is due to Tuskegee. I do not wish in life to be regarded as a man of chance possibilities, but rather as one who has consistently persevered in all of his struggles. Tuskegee teaches nothing with greater force than that success lies in that direction. Princ.i.p.al Was.h.i.+ngton, among other things, has taught that it is necessary to get property and have a bank-account. I have complied with that teaching. I own a farm of 100 acres within one-eighth of a mile of the school. My first property, which I still own, consists of a one-acre lot and a seven-room house. It gives me pleasure to contribute annually $10 to Tuskegee, although this but inadequately expresses my grat.i.tude to the inst.i.tution to which I owe so much.
[2] The West Point system is followed in training the young men. Except that there are no guns, a complete battalion organization exists.
XVI
A NEGRO COMMUNITY BUILDER
BY RUSSELL C. CALHOUN
I have been asked to here set forth incidents of my life as I remember them, especially as they relate to my life at Tuskegee and my work since leaving there. Though there have been quite a number of events in my life, it is somewhat difficult for me to give them in the way they are now desired, as it never occurred to me that they would be worth repeating.
Concerning my ancestry, it is impossible for me to give anything beyond my maternal grandfather, who was about three-fourths Indian. My recollections of him go back to the time when I was about six or seven years of age. My mother, having more children than she could really care for, decided to allow one of my brothers, who was perhaps a year and a half younger than I, and myself, to live with him and his second wife.
My grandfather was quite seventy-five years of age when we went to live with him, and was too feeble to work. He was supported from the poor-house, which gave him a peck of meal, 2-1/2 pounds of bacon, 1 pound of coffee, 1 pound of brown sugar, and once a month 25 cents'
worth of flour. That, together with the little his wife could earn from place to place, const.i.tuted the ”rations” of all of us for a week.
Of my birth no record was kept, my mother having been a slave. All I have been able to learn of the date of my birth is what my mother remembers connected with the close of slavery. In trying to ascertain from her when I was born, she said, ”You was born some time just after Christmas, in the month of January, the third year after the surrender.”
My mother had twelve children. I was the eighth child and the second one born after slavery. All except two of the children were born in the same one-room log cabin with a dirt floor, in the town of Paulding, Jasper County, Miss. My mother did the cooking for her master's family and the plantation help, did all of the milking, and was also washer-woman.
In the summer of 1896 I again visited Paulding, just after graduating from Tuskegee. I had to go there to move my aged mother to more comfortable quarters. She was quite ill, and died soon after I reached Florida with her. When I went to Paulding I measured the house in which I was born, and found it to be 9 feet wide, 17 feet long, 7 feet high, with no windows, with but one door, and a dirt chimney. The furnis.h.i.+ng as I remember it was composed of a chair, a stool, a table, and my mother's bed, which was constructed in one corner of the house. The bed was made by putting a post in the ground and nailing two pieces of wood to the wall from this post, then by putting in a floor, making something like a box to hold the bedding. The children slept in a similarly constructed place, except that the mattress was on the ground and was filled with straw. Our bedding, for the most part, was what wearing apparel we possessed thrown over us at night. Outside the house was a long bench, which was kept for the accommodation of visitors.
A peculiar incident in our home life happened one Sunday morning in March--one Easter Sunday. All of the smaller children were seated on the floor eating their breakfasts from pans and skillets, when a big black snake, without any regard for the children, went into a hole by the fireplace. When one of my older brothers undertook to find him and opened this hole, he found, instead of one, four black snakes that had been wintering in the side of the house.
There was no church or school for us in that whole section. A white man, a Doctor Cotton, to whom I was afterward given until I should become twenty-one years of age, sent his boys to a school which required that they walk eight miles to it and return each day.
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