The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.3, page 482, Oct. 1894, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers A few months elapsed and Miss Dillingham and Miss Thorn came to Alabama. ~ remember distinctly the day that we went together to Calhoun. I remember that it had been raining, it seems to me for a week, and it rained harder and harder. Reaching Calhoun, we waited in a little cabin there for the rain to stop. It did not stop. Finally Miss Dillingham suggested that we provide ourselves in the best way we could against the wet weather and go out and select the spot where they would put their first building. I remember distinctly my feelings, and how gloomy, how dismal and how poverty stricken it seemed; how everything seemed to present the worst appearance possible. I wondered if she would not falter, if she would not grow discouraged. remember I said to her at the close of the day: ''I am glad that you have come here on such a day. ~ am glad that you have an opportunity of seeing things in just this condition, because if after this you can keep your courage, can still make up your mind that you want to come here, I think that everything will be all right.'' She did not seem the least daunted, not the least discouraged, and the place was selected. I see her now as she stood with an umbrella over her head and with the mud up to her ankles, while we decided upon the exact spot and measured on the ground where the hrst building was to be. I can also remember the impression that the coming of these two young women made upon the people, especially upon the black mothers and fathers, those people into whose lives had never come a ray of light or hope. They could not understand it. They could not realize how it was that somebody was enough interested in their condition, in their life, to come there on such a day as that desiring to give life itself for their uplifting. ~ remember, too, how they were looked upon with suspicion by the white people in that neighborhood. I remember it was thought these white teachers had not come there with the best motives, and it was suspected that after all something would be wrong by reason of the coming of these women into that community. But now how changed is all that! Three years have passed away, and how changed is the life! Go to Calhoun and look into the countenances of those black men and black women who were bound down by slavery, who were fettered not only in body, but in morals and mind. Go there to-day and see their countenances beaming with hope and light, feeling that they and their children have something to live for, something to look forward to. See their dress changed. See their 482