At
the end of the exercises he read the telegram to the school. In
substance, these were its words: "Booker T. Washington will suit us.
Send him at once."
There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and
teachers, and I received very hearty congratulations. I began to get
ready at once to go to Tuskegee. I went by way of my old home in West
Virginia, where I remained for several days, after which I proceeded
to Tuskegee. I found Tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand
inhabitants, nearly one-half of whom were coloured. It was in what
was known as the Black Belt of the South. In the county in which
Tuskegee is situated the coloured people outnumbered the whites by
about three to one. In some of the adjoining and near-by counties the
proportion was not far from six coloured persons to one white.
I have often been asked to define the term "Black Belt." So far
as I can learn, the term was first used to designated a part of the
country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part
of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil
was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most
profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest
numbers. Later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be
used wholly in a political sense -- that is, to designate the counties
where the black people outnumber the white.
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