By Danna Downing
I recently read “The Small and the Mighty”, by Sharon McMahon. McMahon is a longtime high school government and law teacher who works to provide non-partisan, fact-based information to counter flashy headlines and the false information so prevalent in our current culture. It is easy to feel small and powerless.
Although all of the well-researched stories were impressive, I found the one about Booker T. Washington particularly instructive and worthy of sharing. Booker was born without a last name. His mother was a slave. As a child he was not permitted to go to school, but his job was to walk the daughters of the family who owned him safely to their one-room school. As he waited outside the school door each day, he became “overcome by the notion that going to school one day would be about the same as getting into paradise.” Fortunately, when his mother was emancipated, they were able to move to West Virginia and begin a new life. There, Booker learned his first few words when he accompanied his stepfather to work at a salt factory. Despite his family’s concerns, Booker was able to start school when he was nine. By age 16, he started working and saving every penny so he could continue his education. By this time, he had adopted Washington as his last name and planned to attend the Hampton Industrial and Normal School to become a teacher. This school required a 100-mile walk to make his application. He overcame this and many other obstacles. He graduated with honors and with a strong determination to improve education for formerly enslaved families.
His story becomes even more intriguing when he meets Samuel Armstrong, a son of Hawaiian missionaries and a commander of an all-Black regiment of Union soldiers. Armstrong found his men to be hard working and valiant soldiers. However, Armstrong feared what could happen to them when they became free men, due to forced illiteracy during enslavement. He also felt that as a white man, he had some responsibility for educating former slaves. He managed to convince the American Missionary Association to support vocational education for freed men. Washington was taken with Armstrong’s efforts and together they began to design a plan to help to help former slaves become literate, find employment, and develop their moral character.
In 1881, when Alabama was looking for someone to serve as the leader of the new Tuskegee Industrial School, Armstrong recommended Washington. Washington accepted the job but soon realized that he had little to work with to build and operate the new school. In order to make the school a success he had to learn how to raise the money to make things happen. He worked for years on Andrew Carnegie to fund a library. He befriended other wealthy whites, who were impressed with his humble attitude and his ability to help them see they were doing something enormously important with their donations.
In 1901, Washington published “Up From Slavery, which sold over 2,000 copies in its first two years. A friend recommended the book to Julius Rosenwald (JR), who after reading it found himself inspired in unexpected ways. JR was struck by the idea that Black people were not inferior because of their color, but rather by their lack of education during years of slavery. JR was a wealthy man who was interested in a better America. “I do not see how America can move ahead if any of its people are left behind,” he told Washington. As a result of their letters, conversations, and hard work, these two men collaborated with Black communities to create 5,000 schools that educated nearly 90% of Alabama’s black students during the early 1900s.
“The Small and the Mighty” focuses on the power we have when we do right by others, do the next thing needed to make life better, develop skills to move from the darkness, and “go for broke” in our efforts to challenge life’s problems. These are timeless ideals we can cling to throughout our lifetimes.
