The Tuskegee Normal School
A model for self development
Just eighteen years after Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery on the United States, Booker T. Washington constructed a staff of individuals to present to the world a long term plan for establishing equality for the newly freed Africans in America’s slave system.
Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881. Washington’s goal was to educate the masses of these newly freed Africans in America’s legal slave system with practical training essential to meet the immediate needs of the people. His desire ignited other dedicated staff members, including Dr. George Washington Carver and Thomas Campbell.
George Washington Carver was born the son of a slave. Raised in Missouri, Carver grew up in an era of change in America. Slavery had just been abolished and newly freed Africans lacked the skills necessary to compete in a free enterprise system.
Carver was at a further disadvantage because he suffered from the health problem. At a young age he came down with a severe case of whooping cough. He was too frail to do the normal work that was expected at his age. He therefore wandered about discovering the many facets of nature. He also enjoyed painting. However, when it came to education, he doubted if he could actually make a living as an artist and decided to pursue a career in agriculture and later went on to receive his masters from Iowa State in Agriculture.
In April of 1896, just after completing the requirements for his Masters of Science degree in agriculture, Carver received a letter from Booker T. Washington, which requested Dr. Carver to set up an agricultural department at Tuskegee. In the letter Washington stated: “ I cannot offer you money, position, or fame…I offer you in their place work-hard, hard, work-the task of bringing a people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood.” Carver took the offer later saying, “this has been Gods plan for me all along.” From that partnership, Tuskegee developed its current reputation as one of America’s leading educational organizations.
Upon becoming the Director of Tuskegee’s agriculture program, Dr George Washington Carver planned and demonstrated the benefits of utilizing a method called “crop rotation to build the soil at Tuskegee, Alabama, which during that time, had lost a lot of its nitrogen due to so many years of growing cotton.
He became known as the “Peanut Man, “ because he created over 385 products from the Peanut. However, initially the peanuts were planted because peanuts roots create a nitrogen fixing bacteria that fertilizes the soil. It just so happens that in the process of using peanuts to fertilize the soil throughout Tuskegee, they had a surplus of peanuts, which they had no idea what to do with. Dr. Carver went back to the drawing board. He stayed in his laboratory for over a week uninterrupted and developed what he called “waste products from the peanut.”
From the peanut, he created over 385 products. It is said that from the products Carver developed the South grossed over $200,000,000 annually.
While living in Georgia, Thomas Monroe Campbell, at the age of sixteen, ran away from home to attend The Tuskegee Normal School in 1899. Upon arriving, he worked and volunteered at Tuskegee to pay his expenses. He soon studied under Dr. Carver and learned to present the teachings of agriculture to others and became the official driver of the Jessup wagon, later termed the “moveable school.”
After graduating from Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington said to Thomas Campbell, “I want you to begin a new and rather peculiar type of work…the reason I am anxious for you to begin the work is that the farmers who need instructions most, I fear are not getting it. We must take, in a larger measure, the information to them…use actual demonstrations rather than speech making only…instead of telling the farmer what to do, show him how to do, and he will never forget it.” This was the beginning of the Movable School.”
Thomas Campbells travels throughout the South are well documented in the autobiography called, The Moveable School Goes To The Negro Farmer.
By the time the idea of a traveling school became a reality, he had built the kind of trust in Booker T. Washington that would make him the first paid demonstrator of Tuskegee.
A man named Jessup financed the wagon, which was drawn by Dr. Carver, for Thomas Campbell to travel throughout the South. He wrote, “ in many places after a hard days work, I went to bed only to be disturbed in the night by countless bedbugs. Occassionally, they were so numerous that by morning the pillows were smeared with blood…it is true that with much effort and inconvenience, I could have found better homes and there in some communities, but my aim was to reach “the man farthest down.”
As Thomas Campbell explains, the movable school demonstrated to the world a strategy of reaching “ the man farthest down.”
In 1929, in Madras, India, Agricultural Department put on a traveling motor exhibition as a means of instructions for the peasants. This outfit resembles our own movable school truck, and in construction and equipment is designed to meet similar needs…to Sangli (also in India) have gone our plans and set.” The movable school was also duplicated in China, Rhodesia, and several other places.
In India, Mohandas Karachand Gandhi, a religious leader , in the peaceful Indian Independence Movement, created a self-sufficient agenda.