The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.5, page 664, Nov. 1900, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers From Frederick H. Christensent Beaufort, S.C., November 2, Gino Dear Sir Some years ago, while a student in the Brookline High School, I had the pleasure of listening to an eloquent address delivered by you to the school. I can not say that I then became interestec! in the subject of industrial education among your people, for coming from the South, and belonging to the South, I had ever been interested in this, and had heard much of your institution. For this reason I was even more interested in your address than the others, realizing how much good your work may do. My mother,2 who is now in Brookline Mass., writes me that she has written to you or Mrs. Washington urging that a young man be sent here from Tuskegee, to start such a work here, on a small scale. She requests me to write to you explaining something about the conditions existing here. Recently I react a book entitled ''Stephen the Black,'' which doubtless you have seen. If the obstacles he met and had to contend against are a fair sample of the conditions existing among the whites and blacks through out the South, then this immediate section is in many respects far ahead of the South as a whole. This is the ''Black County'' of the state. Often I ride into the country in the morning, ride for eight or ten hours and return to town in the evening without having seen a white face outside of the town. There are very few white farmers on this, Port Royal Island. The ''Cracker'' is utterly unknown here in this part of the county, save when court or similar events draw them from distant parts of the county. Never-the-less the colorecl farmers are much more prosperous than those described in the book referred to. Most of them live on small farms that they own themselves—farms of from five to fifty acres. Most of them about lo acres. Some have two-story houses, but most of them live in two room frame houses or log cabins, some of the former ceiled inside, ant! occassionally boasting a shed on back, containing a kitchen. Some of the less energetic live in one room log cabins. The tenant system, which I understand is a curse to many places, 664