SOON after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they did not have any money to pay even the small charges at the school, began applying for admission. This class was composed of both men and women. It was a great trial to refuse admission to these applicants, and in 1884 we established a night-school to accommodate a few of them.
The night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which I had helped to establish at Hampton. At first it was composed of about a dozen students. They were admitted to the night-school only when they had no money with which to pay any part of their board in the regular day-school. It was further required that they must work for ten hours during the day at some trade or industry, and study academic branches for two hours during the evening. This was the requirement for the first one or two years of their stay. They were to be paid something above the cost of their board, with the understanding that all of their earnings, except a very small part, were to be reserved in the school’s treasury, to be used for paying their board in the regular day-school after they had entered that department. The night-school, started in this manner, has grown until there are at present four hundred and fifty-seven students enrolled in it alone.
This was a strange passage to me, but I understood it. It seemed to me that Booker T was saying that the black folk wanted edumacated back then, and edumacated was what they was gonna get!
Ok, so I challenged my White Southern relatives for a moment, but seriously Booker was saying that these people needed an education, and they knew they needed an education. Now was the time to do something about it though, and they knew it too!
Posted by lougagliardi at November 16, 2005 04:17 PM | TrackBack