e Tuskegee Institute celebrated its 25th
Anniversary. A group of well-known American
characters attended 248

Some of Mr. Washington's humble friends 274

Soil analysis. The students are required to work
out in the laboratory the problems of the field
and the shop 274

Mr. Washington was a great believer in the sweet
potato 280

Mr. Washington had this picture especially posed
to show off to the best advantage a part of the
Tuskegee dairy herd 290

Mr. Washington feeding his chickens with green
stuffs raised in his own garden 306

Mr. Washington in his onion patch 306

Mr. Washington sorting in his lettuce bed 306

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

BUILDER OF A CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL IN THE MAKING

It came about that in the year 1880, in Macon County, Alabama, a
certain ex-Confederate colonel conceived the idea that if he could
secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he
coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly, the colonel went to the
leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do
to secure the Negro vote, for Negroes then voted in Alabama without
restriction. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an ex-slave,
promptly replied that what his race most wanted was education and what
they most needed was industrial education, and that if he (the
colonel) would agree to work for the passage of a bill appropriating
money for the maintenance of an industrial school for Negroes, he
(Adams) would help to get for him the Negro vote and the election.
This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave was made and
faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that the following
year the Legislature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a year for the
establishment of a normal and industrial school for Negroes in the
town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong of
Hampton Institute a young colored man, Booker T. Washington, a recent
graduate of and teacher at the Institute, was called from there to
take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and
studentless institution of learning.

This move turned out to be a fatal m