Historical voices

With God’s help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race.

It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong, and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and become “stuck up.” It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one’s self.

But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with patience and wisdom and earnest effort.

In fact, in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith in me than I had in myself.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race.

The people with whom he lives and works are going to think twice before they part with such a man.

The supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same effect as the supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build and repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the community…

The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.

I have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to…

We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted.

The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and…

Many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks.

The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the South.

As an additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the South who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings.

Mistakes I knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach us valuable lessons for the future.

My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make the forces of nature—air, water, steam, electricity, horse-power—assist them in their labour.

From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them erect their own buildings.

One thing I was determined to do from the first, and that was to keep the credit of the school high; and this, I think I can say without boasting, we have done all through these years.

In all our difficulties and anxieties, however, I never went to a white or a black person in the town of Tuskegee for any assistance that was in their power to render, without being helped according to their means.