ing the niggers" by education. A youth with a high collar,
loud necktie, checked suit, and patent-leather shoes, dangling a cane,
smoking a cigarette, and loitering impudently on a street corner was
their mental picture of an educated Negro.

Among the original group of thirty students with whom Mr. Washington
started Tuskegee Institute on an old plantation equipped with a
kitchen, a stable, and a hen-house, was a now elderly man who to-day
has charge of the spacious and beautiful grounds of the Institute. He
was approaching middle age when he entered this original Tuskegee
class. The following is a paraphrase of his account of the early days
of the school: "After we'd been out on the plantation three or four
weeks Mr. Washington came into the schoolroom and said: 'To-morrow
we're going to have a chopping bee. All of you that have an axe, or
can borrow one, must bring it. I will try and provide those of you who
cannot furnish an axe. We will dismiss school early to-morrow
afternoon and start for the chopping bee.' So we came to school next
day with the axes, all of us that could get them; we were all excited
and eager for that chopping bee, and we were all discussing what it
would be like, because we had never been to one before. So in the
afternoon Mr. Washington said it was time for that chopping bee, so he
put his axe over his shoulder and led us to the woods and put us to
work cutting the trees and clearing the land. He went right in and
worked harder and faster and handled his axe better than any of us.
After a while we found that a chopping bee, as he called it, was no
different from just plain cutting down trees and clearing the land.
There wasn't anything new about that--we all had had all we wanted of
it. Some of the boys said they didn't come to school to cut down trees
and clear land, but they couldn't say they were too good for that kind
of work when Mr. Washington himself was at it harder than any of them.
So he kept with us for some days till everybody had his idea. Then he
went off to do something more important.

"Now, in those days he used to go off every Saturday morning and he
wouldn't come back till Monday morning. He'd travel all round the
country drumming up students for the school and telling the people to
send their children. And on Sunday he'd get the preachers to let him
get up in their pulpits and tell the people about the school after
they had finished preaching. And the preachers would warn