TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE AND ITS PRESIDENT. 597 



" While there I resolved that, when I had finished my course 

 of training, I would go into the far South, into the ' black belt ' of 

 the South, and give my life to providing the same kind of oppor- 

 tunity for self-reliance and self-awakening that I had found pro- 

 vided for me at Hampton. My work began at Tuskegee, Alabama, 

 in 1881, in a small shanty and church, with one teacher and thirty 

 students, without a dollar's worth of property. The spirit of work 

 and of industrial thrift, with aid from the State and generosity 

 from the North, has enabled us to develop an institution of a thou- 

 sand students, gathered from twenty-six States, with eighty-one 

 instructors and thirty-eight buildings. 



" I am sometimes asked what is the object of all this outlay of 

 energy and money. To that I would answer that the needs of the 

 ten million colored people in the South may be roughly said to 

 be food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a settle- 

 ment of race relations. These ten million people can not be 

 reached by any direct agency, but they can be reached by sending 

 out among them strong selected young men and women, with the 



STUDENTS AT WORK ON NEW TRADES-SCHOOL BUILDING. 



proper training of the head and hand and heart, who will live 

 among these masses and show them how to lift themselves up. The 

 problem that Tuskegee Institute keeps before itself is how to pre- 

 pare these leaders." 



The first time I went to Tuskegee I happened to ride for half 

 a day through the State of Georgia in the same seat in the car with 



