Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GLENN M. AYERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
How did an old-maid schoolma'am, a half-breed Comanche and a black slave so affect us all? Simply by understanding their constituent minority's needs so thoroughly as to sketch a method for progress from which every American has benefited - even adult, white, Anglo-Saxon males like me, for whom the Founding Fathers had seemed to provide so adequately. This is particularly true in the case of Booker T. Washington.
He and I were born just a few miles apart on very similar farms in the Hales Ford area. Though 82 years physically and light-years politically separate our births, there is a residual similarity he points out early and often: He was born into the poverty of slavery. I came into the poverty created by slavery.
No writer I have ever read describes slavery so effectively. Washington never tells the familiar horror stories of families ripped apart, sexual atrocities, physical torture or the torture of being ``owned.'' Yet his simple words render slavery to the cellar of man's lowest common denominators:
Food: ``... meals were gotten by the children much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.''
Clothing: ``The most trying ordeal ... was the wearing of a flax shirt. ... But I had no choice. I had to wear the flax shirt or none ... had it been left to me to choose, I should have chosen no covering.''
Shelter: ``John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and I ... slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.''
In short, to be a slave was to be an animal - and no petted one, either.
Washington continues his attack on slavery and the poverty it wrought in the opening chapter of "Up From Slavery," describing how the whole South was so ill-served by the system. He claims the whites felt demeaned by work to the point younger generations forgot work skills. Since slaves who did the work could not profit, they took no interest in it. Fences, fields, buildings, even food preparation fell into waste and decrepitude.
It is this utter disregard for work, this potential for continued social paralysis to which he devoted his life. And by dignifying labor to lift the black man, he lifted and inspired us all.
Of course, his focus was on lifting those who had been slaves. Nevertheless, the methodology he developed has become a model for Americans of any race, at any time. His simple thesis was that those who plan to fit themselves for life in this country must begin at the bottom, not the top. This translates to ``work,'' which means (1) preparing to learn, (2) learning to work and (3) appreciating the dignity of labor. As he said, ``There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.''
Learned as a slave-child, nurtured in West Virginia salt mines as a boy, and shaped in the home of the superintendent's wife, work was Washington's ticket to an education. Arriving half-starved at Hampton Institute in 1872, he so impressed the head teacher with his efficiency in cleaning a classroom that she quietly remarked, ``I guess you will do to enter this institution.'' Said Washington, ``[N]ever did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him any more genuine satisfaction.''
He learned another valuable lesson at Hampton. One must be prepared for employment - physically and mentally.
First came personal hygiene to build self-respect: the bath, clean clothes, the comb and brush. He claims, ``[T]here are few farther reaching agencies of civilization than the toothbrush.''
Washington emphasized that only a small part of his education came from textbooks. Debate, public speaking, the Bible, knowledge of good livestock and fowl, plus manual labor - especially manual labor - form the true scholar's character. Any school that did not teach this, he felt, failed in its primary purpose. This would be the foundation for Tuskegee Institute. Here was the living proof of Emerson's dictum: ``Books are for the scholar's idle times.''
Starting with a grant of land, two dilapidated buildings and 30 students, most of whom had to be schooled in personal hygiene, sleeping in a bed, and eating at a table before they could learn carpentry and bricklaying, Washington in the space of 20 years oversaw the growth of the institution to 2,300 acres with 66 buildings and 1,400 students. Just 25 when he started, Booker dug foundations, taught classes, and kept his family's hogs and garden, while raising funds worldwide to make a reality his tripartite educational philosophy: (l) Education should fit one for life; (2) man should keep close to nature; (3) one should earn the respect of his neighbors, black and white.
One wonders how much time Tuskegee students had to party between an eight-hour day of manual labor, classes and study? Conversely, how many freshmen applicants would today's state universities have if an entrance requirement was to build their dormitory? If modern college-housing space is so critical, pass out trowels.
This is not designed for political popularity. It stresses duty and responsibility immediately, rights later when they can be utilized. It has made Washington, if not a pariah in modern civil rights, certainly a sort of callous Uncle Tom: Frederick Douglass on a backhoe. Moreover, his metaphor of blacks and whites being separate fingers on the same hand was a lot to swallow even then, much more so today.
Still, he saw light at the end of the tunnel doing it his way: "No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges."
Another possible reason for Washington's archaic status in today's Afro-American movement was his assessment of the clergy as a poor vocation for the untrained blacks he knew: "While there were many capable, honest, godly men and women, a large proportion took up preaching as an easy way to make a living. In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who learned to read would receive 'a call to preach' within a few days after he began reading. ... While I wanted an education badly, I confess that in my youth I had a fear that when I learned to read and write well I would receive one of these 'calls;' but, for some reason, my call never came."
By contrast, how many individuals trained for our modern technological society have come from those clustered about the Kings, the Jacksons, the Farrakhans? It is a fine thing to tell a cheering crowd in the most eloquent terms they are ``Free at last!'' It is quite another to show free men and women how to lay brick and set a table. It is a measure of infinity to have ``seen the promised land,'' a measure of infinite difficulty to transform a shed and henhouse into Tuskegee Institute.
As we stand in wonder at his accomplishments during this month, there is one certainty. No one will suggest a holiday in his honor. The only one he ever took - a cruise pressed on him by admirers - was spent sleeping. Yes, to set aside a day from work as memento mori would be to miss the life essence of Booker Taliaferro Washington.
Glenn M. Ayers teaches at Staunton River High School in Bedford County.
by CNB