I found what they were doing there, and that
it was an earnest Christian school, my whole soul was uplifted, and I
determined to seek for better things. I thought I was pretty well
educated, but when I found myself down stairs among those learning
grammar and arithmetic, and that there were nine years before me, I
concluded that after all I was not very well educated, but I set out to
go through that long course of study.

During all those years of study I taught school every summer. For nine
years I was not out of the school room a month in the year. I was either
a pupil or a teacher. Wherever I was teaching, I would try to set up a
little Fisk University of my own. You know that the school teacher who
goes out into these country places is everybody and everything. He is
law and gospel, and he must know everything--at least, he must not let
people know that he does not know everything. So I was not only school
teacher, but I organized a Sunday-school, and preached, also. Especially
in Mississippi I did that kind of work, where there was much need of it.
This is the way that hundreds of young men have gone through Fisk
University and other institutions. We get our education sometimes at
great cost, and at great hardships. Sometimes we break down under this
constant strain of teaching. Many a time in Mississippi swamps I have
waded up to my knees in water going to school, and many a time have I
taught lying sick on my back; but the money had to be made. This is the
way we get through, and not only the young men but the girls. There are
two things which it teaches us: It teaches us how to be men, and it
teaches us how to work. We are forced to do it for the money's sake, and
it is not only for the money's sake, because we are sure that these
young men and young ladies go out with a Christian desire to do good,
and a young man, whether he is a Christian or not, feels that he must do
Christian work when he is teaching in the summer. He is hardly
respectable if he does not do that sort of thing during his service as a
teacher. In that way the great masses of the people are being reached by
Christian students going out among them.

So it seems to me as though the problem were being slowly yet truly
solved, and by and by the Negroes will be lifted up on the same footing
with other people. That is the only thing we want. We are not fighting
for social equality, or this or that thing. No intelligent Negro has any
desire to put