No student is permitted to retain who does not keep and use a tooth-brush.
Booker T. Washington
The Public Record
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
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The gospel of the tooth-brush,” as General Armstrong used to call it, is part of our creed at Tuskegee.
To teach the Negro to read, whether English, or Greek, or Hebrew, butters no parsnips.
The plan of having the students make the furniture is still followed, but the number of pieces in a room has been increased, and the workmanship has so improved that little fault can be found with the articles now.
It was my aim from the first at Tuskegee to not only have the buildings erected by the students themselves, but to have them make their own furniture as far as was possible.
Time and patience and encouragement and work would do the rest.
These meetings, it seems to me, enable me to get at the very heart of all that concerns the school.
There are no meetings with our students that I enjoy more than these, and none are more helpful to me in planning for the future.
I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories, and was willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do whatever in God’s name a man might do towards saving the next generation from such a burden.
If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.
The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons.
Who were the more to be pitied—these innocent victims of an ancient wrong, or I and men like me, who had inherited the problem?