BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
(1856-1915) Black American educator born a slave, established and headed Tuskegee Institute to provide practical training to blacks. WASHINGTON''S NOTES ON THE EDUCATION OF BLACKS Highly-important handwritten manuscript (unsigned), 15pp. 8 1/2" x 11", (n.p., n.d.), a set of notes for a speech or lecture written on the back of imprinted Tuskegee Industrial and Normal Institute letterheads. At the top, the pages are numbered 1-7 ("5" appearing twice), 22, 24, 28, and 29, with three unnumbered pages. In small part: "... Education increases one''s wants - what if it does not increase the ability to supply those increased wants - Before one is educated [one] is satisfied - with one room, home made bed, jam pots ... shirt, broken shoes hickory stick, and an old banjo. After - large house, comforts, pictures, piano, broad cloth, patent leather shoes ... hat, store cane, kid gloves, cuffs and collars, neck ties - cuff buttons - wife and children. Now if wants increase faster than ability - the result is that there is either unhappiness or dishonesty...To the front, opportunities vs. wrongs, Never seen a colored man prepared to fill a place, but when the place was not ready before the man was. Lynchings in South...For the last 50 years education has tended in one direction - the cementing of mind to matter - 50 years ago the child 4 years old counted one, two, three, abstractly, now he counts one apple, two blocks - 50 years ago he learned to read by pronouncing abstract characters ''A, B, C'' - now he reads at once not about a dog but some special and tangible dog. Now we study chemistry instead of taking a book and going into a class room and study about something we go into the laboratory and study the thing. In botany we are not content to study about the plant, but we study the plant must see and handle and the same thing is true through all the field of biology ... It has also been our endeavor in every ... to teach how to gain the respect and confidence of the white people among whom they are to live for all time - to do this we constantly remind them that must learn to do something as well or better than any one else...When I first began this work at Tuskegee and the idea got spread [to] our people that the students were to be taught industry in connection with their academic studies, I got a great many verbal messages and letters from parents to the effect 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 say that our people have gradually been educated to the point where they see their own condition and needs so clearly that it has been 8 years since we have had a single protest from parents or students against the teaching of industry, and there is a positive enthusiasm over it. In fact the public sentiment among the students is so strong that it would not permit a student to remain in the grounds who was unwilling to labor...My remarks thus far have had reference mainly to my own race. But there is another side, the more experience I have and the longer I studied this question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much a question as to what you will do with the Negro as what the Negro will do with you and your civilization ... Here were 400 and more picked young men representing the flower of our country who had passed through our common schools, and were preparing themselves and public expense to defend the honor of our country. And yet with grammar, reading, and arithmetic in the public schools, and with all the lessons in the arts of war, in the principles of courage principles of physical courage - the whole system of education in the public schools and Annapolis seems to have totally failed to so prepare a single young man for real life that he could be brave enough, Christian enough - American enough to take this poor defenseless black boy by the hand in open day light and let the world know that he was his friend. Education whether of black man or white man, gives a man physical courage to stand in front of the common, and facts to give him moral courage to stand up in defense of right and justice is a failure..." Much more excellent content illustrating the brilliant thinking of this most influential educator. The pages show some soiling and typical wear, with one page showing sections of archivally repaired paper loss at the corner and edge, but remain overall in very good condition and of historic importance.