king; Printing; Stock-raising; Tailoring; Tinning; and
Wheelwrighting.
Since the founding of the institution, July 4, 1881, seven hundred and
forty-six graduates have gone out from the institution, while more than
six thousand others who were not able to remain and complete the
academic course, and thereby secure a diploma, have been influenced for
good by it.
The school has sought from the very beginning to make itself of
practical value to the Negro people and to the South as well. It has
taught those industries that are of the South, the occupations in which
our men and women find most ready employment, and unflinchingly has
refused to abandon its course; it has sought to influence its young men
and women to live unselfish, sacrificing lives; to put into practise the
lessons taught on every side that make for practical, helpful every-day
living.
In the main those who go out from Tuskegee Institute, (1) follow the
industry they have been taught, (2) teach in a public or private school
or teach part of the year and farm or labor the rest, (3) follow
housekeeping or other domestic service, or (4) enter a profession or the
Government service, or become merchants. Among the teachers are many who
instruct in farming or some industry; the professional men are largely
physicians, and the professional women mostly trained nurses. Dr.
Washington, the Principal of the school, makes the unqualified
statement: "After diligent investigation, I can not find a dozen former
students in idleness. They are in shop, field, schoolroom, home, or the
church. They are busy because they have placed themselves in demand by
learning to do that which the world wants done, and because they have
learned the disgrace of idleness and the sweetness of labor."
No attempt has here been made to represent all of the industries; no
attempt has especially been made to confine representation to those who
are working at manual labor. The public, or at least a part of it,
somewhat gratuitously, has reached the conclusion that Tuskegee
Institute is a "servant training school," or an employment agency. That
is a mistaken idea.
The object of the school is to train men and women who will go out and
repeat the work done here, to teach what they have learned to others,
and to leaven the whole mass of the Negro people in the South with a
desire for the knowledge and profitable operation of those industries in
which they have in so large a measure the rig
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