Discover Smith Mountain Lake
FALL 2016
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Perhaps his greatest strength was his
boundless determination to succeed.
From an early age, he displayed an
intense desire to get an education.
What separated him from most of his
peers was that he recognized both the
value and the dignity of hard work.This
was applied not only to his studies, but
by necessity, to the other aspects of his
life.
After spending his childhood days
working at the plantation, in the
salt furnaces of West Virginia, and
in the coal mines, he managed to
scrape together enough money (or
so he thought) to travel to Hampton,
Virginia. There he planned to study at
the Hampton Institute, a school whose
mission it was to train black teachers.
He was attracted there in part due to
the school’s policy of allowing students
of little or no means to work their way
through school.
Unfortunately,
Washington
underestimated the cost of the journey,
and found himself in dire financial straits
by the time he reached Richmond.
Fiercely determined to complete his
journey, he worked by day unloading
cargo at the docks, and slept by night
under a wooden sidewalk rather than
spend any of his wages on lodging.
Eventually, he succeeded in reaching
the school, arriving once again without
a penny to his name.
The school’s headmistress was a little
skeptical of this ragtag youth who
presented himself at her office, asking
not only to be admitted as a student but
for a job as well. She told him that she
could take him on as a janitor, if he could
prove his worth with a simple test. She
asked him to sweep and dust in a nearby
room. So determined was he to make a
good impression that he swept the floor
three times, and likewise dusted until
every corner of the room was dirt free,
and all surfaces were spotless. When
he announced that he was finished,
the headmistress literally applied the
white glove test, and was astonished
that she could not find a trace of dust
or dirt anywhere in the room. Needless
to say,Washington was both hired and
admitted on the spot.
Thus began a lifelong pursuit of
education and hard physical labor,
neither of which he ever shied away
from. In fact, it was his belief that no
education could be truly complete or
valuable without learning the value
and meaning of hard physical work. He
attributed his unique attitude toward
his experience as a slave, which taught
him some important life lessons.
He had watched as the white plantation
owners, who believed that manual
labor was beneath their dignity, lapsed
into a state of increasing helplessness
as they left all physical work to their
slaves.The slaves, never having received
proper training in the trades, did
the best that they could, but the net
result was that the plantations fell into
disrepair.The unfortunate result of this
was that after emancipation, blacks
were not properly prepared for making
their way in the world, and whites were
similarly unprepared to assume the
duties that had once been performed
by their slaves.
This was compounded by the attitude,
nowheldbybothraces,thatmanual labor
was beneath their dignity. Washington
resolved that he would embrace both
hard physical labor and his academic
studies with equal enthusiasm, and this
turned out to be the key to his success.
In his autobiography, Up From Slavery,
he explains:
The individual who can do something that
the world wants done will, in the end, make
his way regardless of race. One man may
go into a community prepared to supply
the people there with an analysis of Greek
sentences. The community may not at the
time be prepared for, or feel the need of,
Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of
bricks and houses and wagons. If the man
can supply the need for those, then, it will
lead eventually to a demand for the first
product, and with the demand will come the
ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.
Washington exemplified this work ethic
throughout his academic career, and
soon after graduation, he found great
pleasure in the service of his fellowman.
As a young teacher, he never refused or
discouraged any student, regardless of
ability to pay or his workload.
He was soon recognized, and rewarded
with the challenge of establishing a
school in Tuskegee, Alabama, that
would share the mission of the
Hampton Institute inVirginia.Applying
his unparalleled determination to
the project, he succeeded in securing
funds to purchase the land of an old
plantation, and together with his
students, over a period of many years,
he cleared land, erected buildings, and
established agricultural and industrial
enterprises on the school’s grounds.
These enterprises helped to subsidize
the cost of boarding the school’s
growing population, as well as affording
students the opportunity to earn their
own way.
This served the purpose of giving the
students the satisfaction of having built
their own school, as well as teaching
them the value of hard physical labor,
in addition to the pursuits of book
learning. The students were thus
prepared for whatever challenges lay
ahead of them, and at the same time,
they learned that there was no shame in
any kind of work.
It was not long before the school’s
reputation was well-established, and
Washington found himself spending a
great deal of his time traveling to cities
in the north, in pursuit of funding for
expansion of the school, as well as
scholarship money to an increasing
number of needy students. Eventually,
this led to an honorary degree from
Harvard, and a nationwide reputation as
a forceful and effective public speaker.
True to his character, he declined
many invitations to tour the country
as an orator, since he was exclusively
committed to two things: the ongoing
success of Tuskegee Institute, and the
continued advancement of his people.
He adamantly stuck to his personal
pledge that he would never become a
public speaker to enrich himself, but
rather, to advance the causes that he so
dearly espoused.
His ethic also included a belief in being
consistent in his message; he resolved
never to say anything to a northern
audience that he would not say to a
southern audience, and never to say
anything to a white audience that he
would not say to a black or mixed
audience. His tried-and-true character
notwithstanding, Booker T.Washington
often found himself and his words at
the center of controversy.
Some blacks resented his contention
that true justice could only result from
a civilized and respectful interaction
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