At the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the
Christmas and Thanksgiving season at Tuskegee is the unselfish and
beautiful way in which our graduates and students spend their time in
administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the
unfortunate. Not long ago some of our young men spent a holiday in
rebuilding a cabin for a helpless coloured women who was about
seventy-five years old. At another time I remember that I made it
known in chapel, one night, that a very poor student was suffering
from cold, because he needed a coat. The next morning two coats were
sent to my office for him.
I have referred to the disposition on the part of the white people
in the town of Tuskegee and vicinity to help the school. From the
first, I resolved to make the school a real part of the community in
which it was located. I was determined that no one should have the
feeling that it was a foreign institution, dropped down in the midst
of the people, for which they had no responsibility and in which they
had no interest. I noticed that the very fact that they had been
asking to contribute toward the purchase of the land made them begin
to feel as if it was going to be their school, to a large degree. I
noted that just in proportion as we made the white people feel that
the institution was a part of the life of the community, and that,
while we wanted to make friends in Boston, for example, we also wanted
to make white friends in Tuskegee, and that we wanted to make the
school of real service to all the people, their attitude toward the
school became favourable.
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