The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 278, June 1885, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers got to be found to establish the school who had the pluck to bestir himself and secure funds for buildings and the necessary equipment. The State Superintendent of Instruction wrote to General Armstrong, of Hampton fame, asking him to find a principal. General Armstrong named Mr. Barker T. Washington, one of his numerous proteges, who had come to Hampton with only 50 cents in his pocket. Mr. Washington opened his school in a dilapidated country church on the 4th of July, in 188~, after only one week's preparation, with a membership of thirty students. If any orte is in doubt as to whether Mr. Washington was the right man for the place, let him know that in less than four short years the school has attained a membership of nearly coo students, each one of whom signs a contract when he comes here that he will teach at least two years in the public schools of Alabama, and has twelve teachers, for whose service the State now pays $~,ooo a year. That the institution owns 580 acres of land, free of debt; a brickyard from which ~o,ooo bricks are daily turned out by the students, and a windmill and tank sixty-five feet in the air, with pipes and attachments for carrying water to any part of the premises; that there is one college building which cost $6,500, and another to cost over $ ~ o,ooo in process of erection being built by students besides a large number of cottages for boys, poultry-houses, sheds, etc.; that there is a printing office, a carpenter shop, a laundry, a sewing school, forty acres of growing crops, with live stock and tools; and that preparations are now being made with the limited funds that are at the command of this most deserving school to add to the industrial department blacksmithing, tinsmithing, shoemaking, fruit-canning, broom-making, and a saw-mill ! There is also a night school for the very poorest scholars (to whom the institute furnishes employment by the day) and a public colored school to give normal practice to those prospective teachers, after the analogy of the Butler School at Hampton. As I came up from the narrow-gauge depot I was at once forcibly impressed with the beauty of the site of Tuskegee and the typical Southern dilapidation of the town itself. I wended my way along tortuous but broad streets, shaded by glorious old oaks, to the pleasant site of the school. It was the hour of the regular morning inspection and the boys were drawn up in two companies facing each other, with the brass band of the institute at an intermediate point. I noticed with 278