has the reputation of being one of the most
cleanly and sanitary institutions in the South.

As for good manners, Lord Chesterfield himself would scarcely ask more
than is insisted upon by Tuskegee precision. A man must first be
conscious of being a gentleman before he can be recognized as such by
others, and a girl's good manners are only outward evidences of her
individual worth and passport to respectful treatment. Tuskegee
Institute, then, insists upon these things because they make for
character, and are a part of the ideals toward which all training tends.

But how are all these things taught and enforced? The first requisite,
of course, is the character of the teachers and instructors themselves,
the men and women who are the embodiment of the ideals that Tuskegee
Institute stands for. While it can not be claimed that the best teachers
in the South are all at Tuskegee, it can be said that no other school
has so large a number of colored men and women who have had the
advantage of the highest industrial and intellectual, moral and
religious training. The teaching force is made up largely of graduates
from nearly every first-class educational institution in America. These
teachers have been carefully sought out and brought to Tuskegee, not
only for their teaching ability, but that the students may have the
benefit of the best examples before them of what the highest culture can
do for men and women of their own race. For the majority of our students
the perspective of life is narrow: many of them have never lived out of
the community in which they were born. That was their only world; their
ideals of life were shaped by their mean and narrow environments. They
have learned to believe, and act accordingly, that the best people are
all of one complexion, and the worst and poorest people are all of
another complexion. There is no such thing as creating a sentiment of
race pride in such people unless they have set before them living
examples of their own race in whom they can feel a sense of pride.

It is scarcely too much to say that one of the best things about the
Tuskegee Institute is that it wins our young men and women from mean and
sordid environment and brings them in contact with teachers whose minds,
hearts, and lives have been enlarged and graced by the highest learning
in the best educational institutions of the country. The school teaches
no more important lesson than that of cultivating a sense of pride