n as useful and successful as it has is due to the
training and inspiration received at Tuskegee Institute, perhaps not so
much to the agricultural department, for I did not finish that course,
but to the general awakening and stimulating influence which permeates
and is a part of the training of Tuskegee students.

And now while I write, and daily as I work, I am prompted on to better
and stronger efforts because of the Tuskegee in embryo that looms before
me. And as I think, and work, and write, I am gratified because of the
assurance that I am only one of that increasing host whose loyal hearts
and useful lives shall make Tuskegee live forever.

VIII

THE STORY OF A TEACHER OF COOKING

BY MARY L. DOTSON

I graduated with the Class of 1900, Tuskegee Institute. It was the
culmination of an event to which my mother and I had long looked
forward.

I was born in 1879, in a small country village in the southwestern part
of Alabama. My mother was the exceptional colored woman of our
community. She was a dressmaker and tailoress and had all the work she
could do. She owned her own home, a quite comfortable one, and earned
continuously from her work a tidy sum of money.

I have always counted myself fortunate to have had such a home and such
a mother. Very few of the colored people about us owned their own homes;
the village school was a poor makeshift, and it was in session only two
to four months in a year--that is, when some one could be secured to
teach it for the very small salary paid. Both my father and mother had
great respect for educationally equipped people, and desired that their
children should have the opportunity to secure educational advantages.
They tried in every possible way to interest the people in their own
welfare, at least to the extent of supplementing the meager
public-school fund, so as to provide decent educational facilities for
the children. This effort failed. My mother had a room added to her
home, and in it conducted, with my sister's help, a school for the
children of the community. Two of my sisters had been sent away to
school, one to Selma and the other to Talladega. In addition to the
school conducted at our home, my mother was able to get the cooperation
of some of the people in other parts of the county, and two other
schools were started. These schools were afterward taken up, and have
since become helpful factors in the life of the people.

My first lessons were give