The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 26, 1899, Page 21

SU 26, 1899 NDAY, FEBRUARY THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, 'PRESERVE THE (JIORIFS :¢¢o¢o¢¢¢¢+¢+¢+o¢¢+4+¢+*4¢+¢¢++¢#§§ + Artists Inspired by the Late Gonflict—« War Is Destined to : 3 Mark a New Epoch in Art in This Gountry,” Bracony Says. : AR R R ra e IR E LS SRS ] MOST OF What He Is Doing, a Slave He Is oorn the visit which the Presi- McKinley made to Tus- jour hrough the and last and Mrs Does Not Know His Age. view ~complished rly i gton and the litions of life ch have been posible in this country 1at to the very natural first question, How old is Booker Washington?” the wer must be returned, “‘He dogs not know.” He was born a slave in the State of Virginia in or 1858. So humble ws igin, so scant the of the fact that one more had been born ¢ e place that birth which would accurate no speci His -home for those first near the village of Hal oom log ¢ ears, s one of those h uncouth chim: - may even yet see in al puth. T floor of the cab- hard-trodden earth, and the no windows. a circum mong reat account led to this t 30 ver cl eca l';'\"d:v Sagian door was rarely sed, and pe e the confe Fof & drstee 5ip s both lg! air found free Harvard ersity between the logs of the walls Boston on the oc ument on other able ere the mud chinking had fallen out. Freed From Slavery. ears old when the war closed. I have rd him tell of that event in these words: “We knew there had been a war, and in our cabins talked about it. One morning word was sent over the whole place for all the hands to come up to the | ‘btz house.’ Standing there in the yard | in front of the porch a paper was read | out loud to us, and my mother, bending | over me, whispered to me that we were free. 1 was too young to really under- tand what that meant then.” There was now the family to be provid- ol of a thou f tk bilee in Chicago in October of 1398 spoke toan audienceof 15,000 peo- | presence of President McKin who took the occasion to pay Mr. shington & most distinguished compli SPY, BY GILBERT GAUL, the Famous War Artist AMERIGAN NEGROES. Remarkable Gareer of Booker J. Washington of Juskegee and Now a. Leader of 10,000,000 People, a Distinguished Orator, Honored With a Harvard Degree and President of a Great School. 1 which he had | Mr. Washington must have been about | ed for, and soon after freedom was de- | when, but of how quick ha could resak OF ]“EL‘\TEWAR Hampton. He had no money to spare, for all he had earned had gone to help sup- port the family. How He Went to Hampton. Of.this turning point in his life let his own words tell: “3hen I found out that Hampton was-a place where a black boy could study, and at the same time have a | chance to work for his board, and that in addition to study he would be taught how to avork, I made up my. mind to go there. Telling my mother good-by, I started out one morning to find my way to Hampton, ‘although I had but a very few cents In money, and did not have even any definite idea where Hampton was. But I inquired my way, and by walking, begging rides, and paying for a portion of the journey on the steam cars with money earned on the road, I finally reached the city of Richmond, Va. I was- without friends there and entirely without money. I found a good dry place under a plank sidewalk and crawled in there to sleep the |first night. The next day I found work on a vessel where I could earn some money. As the job would last for sev- eral days I kept at work, sleeping every | night in the same place under the slde- !walk. It was a comfortable place, angd IT was in that way enabled to save the . most of my wages to help me to go on. When I reached Hampton I had 50 cents | left. “At Hampton I found an apportunity ror | class-room education and for practical training In industrial life, opportunity to learn thrift, economy. and push. Amid Christian influences I was surrounded by an atmosphere of business and a splrit of self-help that seemed to awaken every faculty in me and cause me for the first time to realize what it meant to be a man instead of a plece of property.” Beginning His Life Work. «Wwhile I was at Hampton I resolved that when I had finished my course of training there I would go into the far fouth, into the ‘Black Belt’ of the | clared the Washingtons migrated to West | Virginia, whera work in the coal mines | offered employment and money wages The journey over the mountains wa: made in a rude cart. The determinatior to rise in life, which then could have only been an instinct, was already stirring the | soul of the boy, and finding that life in ! the mines gave no opportunity for ad- vancement Booker looked for other em- ployment. He was so fortunate as to be hired to work in the Kitchen and run er- rands for a New England woman of un- usual intelligence and great force of character, who was married to a South- ern gentleman, and Mr. Washington has always felt that to her training and ex- ample he owes much of his success in life. This lady, Mrs. Viola Ruffner, is still living, though at an advanced age, at the time I write. Her home now is in Charleston, S. C:, with her son, Major E. H. Ruffner, of the United States army, nd I recently enjoyed the privilege of visiting her there. It was she who taught the boy Booker to read. Speaking of him 0 me she said: Learning to Read. | “He was always a good boy, qulet and | determined to amount to something. He never wasted his time, as so many of my | help did. As_soon as his work was done, even if it was only for a few minutes, he | would sit down in a corner of the kitchen, | With the book from which I was begin- | ning to teach him to read. Only ore thing ever made him uneasyw He was never his work unless he was ‘getting on.’ He left me several times to | try different things; once I remember | working on a steamboat, but he always came back to me, until he finally started for Hampton.” When young Washington was 14 years { ola the reputation of General Armstrong’s | great work at Hampton penetrated to the | West Virginia mountains. To hear of this | was to realize at once that this was a means for “getting on.” It was not a question of whether he should go, «or satisfied with South, and give my life to providing the | same kind of opportunity for sej-reliance and ‘self-awakening that I had found pro- vided for me at Hampton. My work be- gan at Tuskegee, Ala.,In 1881, in a small shanty and church, with one teacher and thirty students, without a dollar's worth of property. The spirit of work and of industrial thrift, with aid from the State and generosity from the North, has en- abled us to develop the school to its pres- ent proportions.” Tuskegee Institute is now a school where over a thousand young colored men and Women are taught each how to make their lives count for the most possi- ble, both for themselves and for their race. It is an intensely practical school, and does not teach books so much as it does facts, and how to use them. The school now owns several thousand acres of land and about forty buildings. The pupils who are studying farming do all the work upon the land, and of the forty bufldings, many of them three and four story brick structures, all except the first three small ones have been bullt, begin- ning with the making of the bricks and the cutting of the lumber, by the pupils in | the mechanical arts classes’ Tuskegee Is the largest school in the world for colored pupils conducted wholly by colored teach- ers. Its executive force and instructors, numbering nearly one hundred, are all men and women of the negro race, and except for the board of trustees, none of whom reside at the school, there is no one connected with the iInstitute who {8 not of the race for the helping of which its ef- forts are directed. One unique feature of Tuskegee is its Negro Conference held there in February of each year. There are many other schools for colored young men and women in the country, but no- where else is there a school for the fath- ers and mothers of these young people. That {s what the conference really is, a school, even though {ts sessions are for only one day in a year, and the most of the puplls who come to it have gray hair and cannot read or write. As I heard a grizzled old negro say, when he made the prayer which opened one of these ses- sions: O Lawd, we wants to t'ank de for dis our one day ob schoolin’ in de whole year.” Tuskegee now has a fine new brick church, large enough to seat over two thousand people, dedicated in_the spring of 1898. is buflding was designed by one of the instructors there, and, like all the others, built by the boys. The growth of the school and of the conference has been so rapid during the last five vea that until this building was erected there was no audience room large enough to accommodate the students at chapel or the men and women at the conference, and a rudely built temporary structure had been used. I doubt if the new church will accommodate the conference now, and 1f it does I am sure the meeting will bo @8 impressive as it was in its old sur- roundings. The Most Stirring Incident in the Life of the U, S B:ttleship Maine. Before Her lil-Fated End in Havana Harbor: As painted for (anaresa