Black Activist on Tuskegee
T Thomas Fortune, a Black activist and newspaper editor,
writing in the nationally circulated Black periodical, Christian Recorder
(May 15, 1890)
"I
have spent a week at Tuskegee, forty miles from Montgomery, investigating and
studying the great work being done here, in the agree Normal [Teacher Training]
and Industrial Institute, of which Mr. Booker T Washington is the originator
and projector. . . .
"Here
we have under control a thousand acres of land; here we have 400 colored sons,
drinking in knowledge from the faithful ministrations of twenty-eight colored
teachers, male and female. A more interesting spectacle can nowhere else be
seen and studied. . . . Splendid farm equipments, stock-raising, fruit culture,
laundry work, practical housekeeping in all its branches, black smithing, wheelwrighting,
carpentering, printing and building, shoe and harness making, masonry are all
taught in their practical forms, while a splendid Normal school system is
maintained to prepare school teachers for the great work before them. . . .
"No
time is wasted on dead languages or superfluous studies of any kind. What is
practical, what will best fit these young people for the work of life, that is
taught, and that is aimed at? Nor is moral and religious culture neglected. . .
. It is impossible to estimate the value of such a man as Booker T
Washington."