No. 4.] THE COLORED RACK. 257 



so I could £0 on with the recitations. After I had used the 

 shanty a few weeks, and the number of students began to 

 increase, 1 found it necessary to call into use an old-fash- 

 ioned henhouse. I mention this because of its relation to 

 the subject of productive industry, especially to the branch 

 of agriculture. I found it necessary to call into use an old- 

 fashioned henhouse, and I said to an old colored man one 

 afternoon that I wanted him to come the next morning and 

 help me clean that henhouse out, that we had to use it for 

 school purposes ; and the old fellow with considerable ex- 

 citement said to me: "What yo mean, Boss? You sholy 

 are fixing to get right into trouble. You're sholy a stranger 

 round here, you think of cleaning out that henhouse in the 

 daytime." 



That was our beginning at Tuskegee in 1881. As I 

 analyzed the life of the people of my race in that section, 

 soon after goino- there, it seemed to me there were a few 

 primary needs to which we should give our attention, 

 especially if we would lift them up, or, what is better than 

 that, get them to the point where they would lift them- 

 selves up. In analyzing their condition, we found that in a 

 very large degree they were without proper food ; that they 

 needed to be taught the lesson of raising, in an intelligent 

 way, the food upon which they were to subsist from day to 

 day. We found them in a very large degree without shel- 

 ter, without homes. We said: "These are the cardinal 

 needs of the people, — food, shelter, clothing ; and it seems 

 to us the part of common sense, the part we should perform 

 in uplifting them, to teach them, through the medium of 

 men and women whom we shall send out from this institu- 

 tion, to supply these primary needs as fast and as soon as 

 possible." So we said that as far as possible, while giving 

 our students education in the book, we were going to teach 

 them, while they were in the school, how to earn their liv- 

 ing intelligently and successfully out of the soil upon which 

 they lived. We felt that, if we were to help those people, 

 we must go down to the foundations of their life. 



Some time ago, in the south, in the teaching of a Sun- 

 day-school class, an old minister was trying to explain to 



