Up from Slavery
CHAPTER IV HELPING OTHERS AT THE end of my first year at Hampton I was confronted with another difficulty. Most of the students went home to spend their vacation. I had no money with which to go home, but I had to go somewhere. In those days very few students were permitted to remain at [...]
CHAPTER XVI EUROPE IN 1893 I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray, a native of Mississippi, and a graduate of Fisk University Nashville, Tenn., who had come to Tuskegee as a teacher several years before, and at the time we were married was filling the position of Lady Principal. Not only is Mrs. Washington [...]
CHAPTER V THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD THE years from 1867 to 1878 I think may be called the period of Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia. During the whole of the Reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating the minds of the [...]
CHAPTER XVII LAST WORDS BEFORE going to Europe some events came into my life which were great surprises to me. In fact, my whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do [...]
CHAPTER VI BLACK RACE AND RED RACE DURING the year that I spent in Washington, and for some little time before this, there had been considerable agitation in the state of West Virginia over the question of moving the capital of the state from Wheeling to some other central point. As a result of this, [...]
CHAPTER VII EARLY DAYS AT TUSKEGEE DURING the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the instructors there. One of these instructors was the Rev. Dr. H. B. Frissell, the present Principal of the Hampton Institute, General Armstrong's successor. In [...]
CHAPTER VIII TEACHING SCHOOL IN A STABLE AND A HEN-HOUSE I CONFESS that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. I was only one person, and it seemed to [...]
CHAPTER IX ANXIOUS DAYS AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS THE coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama, gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of the people. The first thing that reminded us that Christmas had arrived was the "foreday" visits of scores of children rapping at [...]
CHAPTER XI MAKING THEIR BEDS BEFORE THEY COULD LIE ON THEM A LITTLE later in the history of the school we had a visit from General J. F. B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, who had had faith enough to lend us the first two hundred and fifty dollars with which to make [...]
CHAPTER XII RAISING MONEY WHEN we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic of Porter Hall, our first building, for a number of girls. But the number of students, of both sexes, continued to increase. We could find rooms outside the school grounds for many of the young men, but the girls [...]
