could secure a little piece of meat.

I well remember one morning, when I had started to school and she had
given me all the meat that we had in the house, how it worried me that
she should have nothing left for herself but bread. Worrying over our
cramped condition, I resolved that what she did for me should not be
thrown away. I longed for the time when I could repay her for all she
had done for me.

At the age of twelve it pleased the Almighty God to take from me my
grandmother, my only dependence. I was now left to fight the battle of
life alone. I need not tell of the hard times and sufferings that I
experienced until I entered school at the Tuskegee Institute. But
knowing that I was without parents, and being sick most of the time, my
hardships can be imagined.

Through a minister I heard of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute in the early part of 1888, and so favorably was it recommended
that I decided I would rent two acres of land and raise a crop, and take
the proceeds and go to Tuskegee the following fall. After paying my
rents and other small debts I had $20 left with which to buy my clothes
and start for Tuskegee, which I did, starting on the 27th of December,
1888, and arriving at Tuskegee on the first day of January, 1889, with
$10. I had walked most of the way. I was at Tuskegee for four and
one-half years. I managed to stay there for that length of time by
working one day in the week and every other Saturday during the term and
all of the vacations.

During my Senior year I was helped by Mr. R. O. Simpson, the owner of
the plantation on which I was reared. I had trouble that year in
deciding just what I should do after graduation. It had been my
conviction that I must be a lawyer or a minister. In contemplating the
idea of becoming a lawyer, however, I could not see wherein I could
carry out the Tuskegee Idea of uplifting the masses. The ministerial
profession was very little better, since the work of the minister in our
section of the country must be limited almost wholly to one
denomination. So I finally decided to try to plant an institution
similar to the Tuskegee School, an undenominational one, in a section of
Alabama where such work should be needed. I chose, as my field of labor,
Snow Hill, the place from which I had gone to enter school at Tuskegee.

The school is now known as the Snow Hill Normal and Industrial
Institute, and is located in the very center of the "Black Belt" of