Mr. Lewis Adams, the faithful worker and Sunday-school
Superintendent. Mr. Adams was in those early days as he is now, the
leader of the colored people of the town of Tuskegee in all that went to
make for the uplifting of his people. I can pay no better tribute to him
than to quote what Principal Washington himself says in his monumental
autobiography, Up from Slavery:

In the midst of the difficulties which I encountered in getting the
little school started, and since then through a period of nineteen
years, there are two men among all the many friends of the school
in Tuskegee upon whom I have depended constantly for advice and
guidance; and the success of the undertaking is largely due to
these men, from whom I have never sought anything in vain. I
mention them simply as types. One is a white man and an
ex-slaveholder, Mr. George W. Campbell; the other is a black man
and an ex-slave, Mr. Lewis Adams. These were the men who wrote to
General Armstrong for a teacher.

Mr. Campbell is a merchant and banker, and had had little
experience in dealing with matters pertaining to education. Mr.
Adams was a mechanic, and had learned the trades of shoemaking,
harness-making, and tinsmithing during the days of slavery. He had
never been to school a day in his life, but in some way he had
learned to read and write while a slave. From the first, these two
men saw clearly what my plan of education was, sympathized with me,
and supported me in every effort. In the days which were darkest
financially for the school, Mr. Campbell was never appealed to when
he was not willing to extend all the aid in his power. I do not
know two men--one an ex-slaveholder, one an ex-slave--whose advice
and judgment I would feel more like following in everything which
concerns the life and development of the school at Tuskegee than
those of these two men.

I have always felt that Mr. Adams, in a large degree, derived his
unusual powers of mind from the training given his hands in the
process of mastering well three trades during the days of slavery.

I did not graduate from the public schools as children do nowadays in
the cities. Mr. Booker T. Washington's coming to Tuskegee and the
establishment of the Tuskegee Normal School put an end to the
public-school work on "Zion Hill," where the Tuskegee public school for
colored children was loca