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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