The occasion of the
trouble was that a dark-skinned man had stopped at the local hotel.
Investigation, however, developed the fact that this individual was a
citizen of Morocco, and that while travelling in this country he spoke
the English language. As soon as it was learned that he was not an
American Negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared. The man who
was the innocent cause of the excitement, though, found it prudent
after that not to speak English.
At the end of my first year with the Indians there came another
opening for me at Hampton, which, as I look back over my life now,
seems to have come providentially, to help to prepare me for my work
at Tuskegee later. General Armstrong had found out that there was
quite a number of young coloured men and women who were intensely in
earnest in wishing to get an education, but who were prevented from
entering Hampton Institute because they were too poor to be able to
pay any portion of the cost of their board, or even to supply
themselves with books. He conceived the idea of starting a night-
school in connection with the Institute, into which a limited number
of the most promising of these young men and women would be received,
on condition that they were to work for ten hours during the day, and
attend school for two hours at night.
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