I asked Mr. Washington years ago what he regarded as the most important result of his work, and he replied: 

“I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee’s work on the Negro, or the effect on the attitude of the white man to the Negro.”

The race divergence under the system of miseducation was fast getting wider.  Under the influence of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea the races are coming into a closer sympathy and into an honourable and helpful relation.  As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a responsible part of the Southern life; and the whites so recognize him.  And this must be so from the nature of things.  There is nothing artificial about it.  It is development in a perfectly natural way.  And the Southern whites not only so recognize it, but they are imitating it in the teaching of the neglected masses of their own race.  It has thus come about that the school is taking a more direct and helpful hold on life in the South than anywhere else in the country.  Education is not a thing apart from life—­not a “system,” nor a philosophy; it is direct teaching how to live and how to work.

To say that Mr. Washington has won the gratitude of all thoughtful Southern white men, is to say that he has worked with the highest practical wisdom at a large constructive task; for no plan for the up-building of the freedman could succeed that ran counter to Southern opinion.  To win the support of Southern opinion and to shape it was a necessary part of the task; and in this he has so well succeeded that the South has a sincere and high regard for him.  He once said to me that he recalled the day, and remembered it thankfully, when he grew large enough to regard a Southern white man as he regarded a Northern one.  It is well for our common country that the day is come when he and his work are regarded as highly in the South as in any other part of the Union.  I think that no man of our generation has a more noteworthy achievement to his credit than this; and it is an achievement of moral earnestness of the strong character of a man who has done a great national service.

Walter H. Page.

UP FROM SLAVERY

Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia.  I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.  As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads post-office called Hale’s Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859.  I do not know the month or the day.  The earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters—­the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.  This was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others.  I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square.  In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.