Booker T. Washington

“ It is hardly necessary to say that the teacher should set the example for the student in the matter of cleanliness and neatness. The teacher who would preach against grease spots, rents in clothes and buttonless jackets must see to it that he is himself without fault in these respects. When I go into a school and notice that the instructor has buttons off his coat, I am at once convinced that he is not the right teacher. I do not believe that there is much that the student can learn at that school that can be put into practice in real life. ”

“ I do not want the Tuskegee students to be lamp-posts in their religious life, but I want them to turn their beliefs into energy that shall work into every detail of their lives.
Not less repulsive to me than the negative Christian is the one who is always using his religion as a means of escape from something, from hell fire or brimstone or some less remote punishment. This class of Christians use religion as people use the conjurer’s bag or a disinfectant to ward off evil. They are not drawn to any vital thing in religion; they simply use it as a cloak to shield them from harm. ”

“ As a race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-off period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reap our rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are punished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. ”

“ As with an individual, so with a race. When you and I and all the other individuals that go to make up our race shall have learned to do well our own peculiar work, we shall be able to determine the bent of the race. It must fall upon you and me, who have had opportunity to work out in some measure our own individual problems, to give direction to the race. It is for us, therefore, to bring to the enrichment of our lives, as individuals, every quality which we are capable of cultivating. ”

“ He who lives outside the law is a slave. The freeman is the man who lives within the law, whether that law be the physical or the divine. All life is governed by law, and the student must acquire freedom by obedience to law. The students in any institution are divided into two classes: the happy, contented, ambitious, hopeful ones, who have faith in the institution and respect for its traditions, and the miserable, discontented, grumbling class. ”

“ The world is full of little people who through lack of wisdom and patience and perseverance merely add to the world’s burdens. The despised Negro has the chance to show to the world that charity which suffereth long and is kind and which never faileth. In the face of discouragements and difficulties the Negro must ever remember that nobody can degrade him. Nobody can degrade a big race or a big man. No one can degrade a single member of any race. The individual himself is the only one who can inflict that punishment. ”

“ A largeness of life, a variety of interests and breadth of view are among the prizes which a school offers to its students. These qualities the ignorant man does not possess. Largeness of life and breadth of vision give faith in the future; that largeness makes one person take the long view when the other is taking the short view; that largeness lifts the educated person far above the temptation to gossip about little things, above the temptation to get down into the mud and slime with which weaker individuals are smeared. ”

“ Each Negro can put much into the life of his race by making his own individual life present a model in purity and patience, in industry and courage, in showing the world how to get strength out of difficulties. The late President Garfield once said that no person ever drowned, no matter how many times he was thrown overboard, who was worth saving, and that remark, with a few modifications, might be applied to a race. No race is ever lost that is worth saving, and no race need be lost that wants to save itself. ”

“ Each generation is very anxious to engage in the building of the palaces, an ambition which is altogether laudable, but the forests must first be cleared or there will be no palaces. And so it falls to the lot of every successful individual of every race and nation to engage at some time or period in their existence in dealing in a large degree with the industrial or material affairs of life. ”

“ Skill and intelligence were not considered necessary, but to-day in every civilized country there are institutions that have for their sole purpose the teaching of methods of getting everything possible out of the soil. A few years ago the mining of coal, copper, silver and gold was left to the most unintelligent, ignorant and unskilled people; there was little thought or skill put into preparation for this kind of work. To-day mining schools have been established in all important mining districts, and this industry has been so dignified that intelligent and skilful men delight to enter it. ”

“ The man who allows himself to grow careless about sacred things yields to a temptation which is sure to drag him down. As you value your spiritual life, see to it that you do not lose the spirit of reverence for the Most High as revealed in your own life and experience, reverence for the Most High as revealed in the men and women about you, in the opening flower, the setting sun, and the song of the bird. Do not mistake denominationalism for reverence and religion. ”

“ I should have suspended school a day or two until the plastering could be replaced, rather than teach day after day by silent approval a lesson of disorder. If the teacher is careless, the pupils will accept his standards and go through life in an indifferent, slipshod manner. If from the first day they enter school they are surrounded with object lessons of order and cleanliness, more will have been done to educate them in a large and helpful way than if they had centred their interest in books alone. ”

“ What does it matter to the world whether a person has small feet or large feet? Who ever stops to think whether great poets, historians,4 the great workers in economic and religious life,—men and women who have really accomplished something,—had large or small feet, whether they wore fours or eights, or wore large or small corsets or none. I am glad to see that all peoples and races are getting away from that kind of thing, and I want the Tuskegee students to make up their minds to buy shoes to fit no matter what the number. ”

“ But the chance for material success in connection with industrial life is relatively of less importance than is the chance for the individual to get development through the mastering of difficulties in the management of industrial operations. The mere mastering of these difficulties has made many of the Captains of Industry of this country. Poverty discourages many a youth who starts out in the busy industrial world, but the fact that others have conquered poverty is an earnest that others, for centuries to come, will get courage and strength out of adverse struggle. ”

“ It is difficult for the parent of the country child to note the results of education through the usual processes and channels of knowledge. Colored parents depend upon seeing the results of education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important then that the colored teacher in this generation should give special attention to bringing school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my mind “high” which enables the individual to do the very best work for the people by whom he is surrounded. ”

“ Now, your body is a machine, but how much more delicate and intricate than any made by man! how much more necessary to keep it in good running condition and absolutely clean in order that it may do its best work! ”

“ The world is making all the material products serve not as masters but as servants, and servants in the sense that they are making people put more thought, more effort, more skill into life, and enabling them thus to get more abundant returns wherewith to enlarge and ennoble their lives. ”

“ The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home. ”

“ To live the real religious life is in some measure to share the character of God. The word “atonement,” which occurs in the Bible again and again, means literally at-one-ment. To be at one with God is to be like God. Our real religious striving, then, should be to become one with God, sharing with Him in our poor human way His qualities and attributes. To do this, we must get the inner life, the heart right, and we shall then become strong where we have been weak, wise where we have been foolish. ”

“ In the school-houses in the city, and in many of the larger towns and country districts, janitors do all the work of cleaning. This may be necessary in city schools, where it is not possible for the children to do all the work of beautifying and cleaning the school building, but when all this work is done by outsiders the children are robbed of part of their instruction and they thus lose a very important lesson in cleanliness and order which it is the duty of the teacher to give. Think of the time lost in the average family looking for the broom when the time comes to sweep the floor. ”

“ His establishment is patronized by people who buy from him not in spite of the fact that he is a Negro, but because he is a Negro. The world needs men, be they white or black, who can rise on successive failures to useful citizenship. No person can enter industrial life without for a time feeling some days of almost complete failure, but mistakes and weariness beget confidence and experience. ”

“ The world’s work is to be done by men and women of vigorous intellect; but the sound mind must have its foundation in a body which is kept clean and made comfortable by proper clothing, pure air, regular exercise and wholesome food. No workman, however competent, can do good work unless his tools are kept in proper repair. My plea is that the young Negro students shall acquire strong working bodies to be used as tools to serve therewith their fellows and their Maker. ”

“ All industrial operations and material progress should be used not as ends but as means of making life more comfortable, more useful and more beautiful. The intelligent farmer as he plants and works and harvests the cotton must remember that the production of cotton is not the end of his effort. ”

“ We are often criticised as a race because people say that our religion is not real. They say that our religion is superficial, that in spite of28 our attendance at religious services and protestations of faith we are guilty of petty pilfering, stealing, lying and of walking crookedly in many directions. Whenever this criticism is true it means that we have not learned what the religious life really means. We must learn to incorporate God’s laws into our thoughts and words and acts. Frequent reference is made in the Bible to the freedom that comes from being a Christian. ”

“ In addition to pure air and cleanliness, I want to speak of the wearing of comfortable clothing as another essential to right living. I am glad to see that the world is fast getting away from the old habits that used to enslave people in this matter of dressing—the habit exercised by many of wearing small shoes, for instance, until their feet were cramped in severe pains merely to have the world think they had small feet. ”

“ The lesson for all young people to learn in this busy industrial age is to deal with materials, whether at first hand in getting something out of the soil, or as constructing or distributing agents, so as to increase the value of the material they handle and to make themselves more useful as individuals. ”

“ The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he is teaching him to reason out examples in Arithmetic, to prove propositions in Geometry and to recite pages of History. ”

“ Now the race to which Americans of African lineage belong is often described as “a peculiar people,” having had, as we know, a peculiar history. They differ in color and in appearance, and in a very large degree their temperament and thought differ from that of the people about them. ”

“ The large problem of the teacher is not to impart knowledge and maintain discipline. The larger problem is to bring school life and real life into closer contact. With the average teacher, as with the average student, there is very little connection between the school and life as it is actually lived every day outside the school-room ”

“ There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody else of any race can do them better. ”