A Leader of the Negro Race Dies

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 25, 1915

A Leader of the Negro Race Dies

THE morning press of November 15 brought the news of the death of Booker T. Washington, foremost teacher and leader of the Negro race. Hardening of the arteries, following a nervous breakdown, caused his death, at 4:40 A. M., at his home, in Tuskegee. Though he was born into slavery when Negro mothers made no record of nor long remembered the date of a child's birth, “Who's Who in America” states that he was born “about 1859.” We take from the Washington Post of November 15 the following brief summary of his life up to the time he took charge of the Tuskegee Institute:—

Soon after the close of the Civil War the little Negro boy went with his stepmother to Malden, W. Va., where he worked in salt furnaces for nine months in the year and attended school for three months. After several years of such life the boy obtained work in the kitchen of Mrs. Viola Ruffner, a New England woman who had married a Southerner. Mrs. Ruffner soon recognized the boy's eagerness and ability to advance himself, so she taught him the elementary subjects. Booker Washington felt grateful to her to the end of his life because she really gave him his start.

In 1871, when he was about thirteen years old, he heard of the Hampton Institute, and he decided at once to attend it. So, with the little money he had been able to save from his wages of six dollars a week, he set out for Richmond, Va., hoping to earn enough there to enable him to go on to Hampton, which is near Norfolk. This was in 1871. (Dr. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute just ten years later.) He was admitted to the institute, and was graduated at the head of his class in 1875, after working his way through the school.

After graduation, Dr. Washington returned to Malden, and taught school until he had earned enough to enable him to go to the Wayland Seminary, in Washington, D. C., where he studied until 1879, when he was called to Hampton as a teacher in the institute. After he had taught for two years, in 1881 the State of Alabama voted to found an industrial institute for Negroes, similar to that at Hampton, and, after searching for a Negro qualified to head the proposed institution, Dr. Washington was selected. This was his entrance into the “black belt” of the South, a chance which he had long desired; and when he assumed charge of the institute at Tuskegee, Ala., his real life work began.

How well he did his work is shown by the following statistics:—

The institute opened on July 4, 1881, with one teacher and thirty pupils. At that time it had neither land nor buildings, nothing but the $2,000 a year granted by the Alabama Legislature.

When the institute celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, it owned 2,000 acres of land and eighty-three large and small buildings, which, with its equipment of live stock, stock in trade, and other personal property, were valued at $831,895. This did not include 22,000 acres of public land remaining unsold from the 25,000 acres granted by Congress, valued at $135,000, nor the endowment fund, which was $1,275,644. During the year there were more than 1,500 students enrolled in the school, more than 1,000 young men, and more than 500 young women. The students were trained in thirty-seven industries.

In his death the whole Negro race has sustained a great loss.