ol I can not speak
too highly. Sixty have graduated, and fifty-seven of the number are
still living. Not only they, but many who could not afford to stay and
graduate, are at work in an effort to help their less fortunate
brethren. Thirty-six of my graduates have taken academic or trade
courses in other schools, twenty-one of them at Tuskegee Institute. Ten
have graduated from Tuskegee, or from other schools. Thirty-eight of
them have learned trades, and all of them are at work and prosperous.
They include dressmakers, cooks, housekeepers, laundresses, carpenters,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, painters, etc. Several are successful
farmers, and one of the girls is a large cotton-planter and general
farmer. Two are successful merchants in Birmingham, Ala.; one is a
prominent minister, having also taken a course at the Virginia Union
Seminary, Richmond, Va.; one is in charge of an orphan asylum, and
several are teachers; one taught with me for seven years after having
also graduated from Tuskegee. Thirty have married, fifteen have bought
homes, one has property valued at $7,000, others have property ranging
in value from $800 to $2,000. Of the sixty, only four have failed to
maintain their moral character.

Six teachers are now employed; we really need another. About 30 boarding
pupils are regularly enrolled, with 250 pupils in daily attendance from
near-by homes.

The school is conducted just as economically as it well can be; the
annual expense is about $2,000, of which sum I have insisted that the
people themselves shall annually meet one-half.

If I have been of any service to my people, I owe it all to Mr.
Washington and to one of the noblest women that ever lived, Mrs. Booker
T. Washington, nee Davidson, both of whom indelibly impressed upon me
while attending the Tuskegee Institute those lessons which led me to
want to spend myself in the helping of my people.

X

UPLIFTING THE SUBMERGED MASSES

BY W. J. EDWARDS

I was born in Snow Hill, Wilcox County, Ala., in the year 1870. My
mother died when I was twelve months old. About five or six years after
this, perhaps, my father went away from Snow Hill; the next I heard he
was dead. Thus at the age of six I was left without father or mother. I
was then placed in the care of my old grandmother, who did all that was
in her power to send me to the school located near us. Often for weeks I
would go to school without anything but bread to eat. Occasionally she