was going out not to return and meet indulgent and persuasive
teachers, loving classmates, and devoted friends. I then realized the
full meaning of the phrase we had selected that year as our class motto,
"Finished, yet just begun." Finished I had at Tuskegee, but I had to
begin work and life in the great busy world, with confidence alone as an
asset. The Commencement exercises on this particular occasion were most
impressive to me, made so in part, I suspect, because I was to be the
happy recipient of a coveted diploma. The Commencement speaker was the
late Joseph C. Price,[1] of North Carolina, and he was at his best.

Knowing no other field more inviting, I returned to Pratt City, where I
had worked successfully. On the 6th of June, 1889, I alighted from the
cars, and after spending a few days visiting relatives and friends,
applied at No. Four (4) Slope for a set of checks to dig coal. The
checks were readily given me because of my previous record as a miner.
After working there during the summer months, and with the same success
as had attended me previously, I had secured sufficient money to
straighten out my little financial affairs and move my parents and a
widowed sister with six small children from Tuskegee to Pratt City,
where I had decided permanently to live.

About this time Pratt City was made, by act of the Alabama Legislature,
a separate and independent school district, and I had the honor of being
elected to the principalship of the Negro school. There I had my first
experience as a teacher. I put my whole soul into the work. I had before
me the example of the Tuskegee teachers, and the lessons so thoroughly
taught there. That I must serve my fellows earnestly and unselfishly was
never forgotten.

So pleased was the Board of Education with my work that my salary was
soon advanced to $110 per month. This salary was somewhat extraordinary,
but Pratt City, Birmingham, Ensley, etc., are in one of the richest
mining sections in the world, and the money earned by blacks and whites
is greatly in excess of that earned in other parts of the State. I held
this position for four years, teaching eight and nine months in the
year, and spending the remaining three or four months of the time
working in the mines.

After a time my physical system had begun so completely to run down,
that I was reluctantly compelled to resign the position of teacher. In
the meantime I had purchased a home at Pratt City. Leaving my p