HAMPTON and Tuskegee and Points North! A call like this has been sounding in every important railroad center in the South since 1915, varying according to location whether in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina or Louisiana. It has been the signal for thousands of Negroes to gather their bundles, dress-suit cases and lunch boxes, and board the trains for the great industrial centers of the North—Detroit, Chicago, Akron, Pittsburgh, Newark, New York, Springfield, Cleveland and Buffalo. Some have been content to take a shorter flight and have stopped off at Birmingham, Chattanooga, Newport News and Norfolk; but all of them have been impelled by a vision, sometimes vague and dim, sometimes sharp and clear, of better wages, better living conditions and better opportunities than have been theirs on the farms and plantations of the South.

Estimates of the numbers who have joined in this migration have varied all the way from 350,000 to 1,000,000 but all have agreed that there has been a steady exodus from the country to the city, from the soil to the factory. The consequences have aroused attention both in the section from which they have come and in the section to which they have moved. The movement itself has altered conditions which they left behind and is altering the very conditions which they hoped to find. For a time the agricultural program of certain sections of the South was completely upset. In some places there was an almost complete stagnation of farming operations. Negro farm laborers left at all seasons of the year, and many a crop was left ungathered because there were no hands to take it in.

Had such a movement occurred a generation earlier the result might have been very different not alone for the Negro, but for the South whose economic system is so largely dependent upon Negro labor, and the North would have been utterly unable to absorb so great an access to its population. But two conditions operated simultaneously with this movement of the Negroes. One was the expansion of industry in the North consequent on the war, coupled with the depletion of the ranks of immigrant labor by those returning home to light. The other was the fact that for nearly fifty years strong influences had been at work among Negroes which enabled them to adapt themselves more quickly to the change from rural to urban life and from agricultural to industrial pursuits.

This vast movement of the Negro population was the result of a wartime demand for labor in the industrial centers North and South. 1 Negroes had long felt the restraint of restricted opportunities in the South. Individuals and small groups had all along been finding release in various sections of the North, but the great masses were compelled to remain where they were, as there was at that time no disposition to exploit the labor supplies of the South. During the same period there was a mighty influence at work below Mason and Dixon’s Line enlarging the outlook of the Negro and preparing the race not only to take advantage of new opportunities but to create opportunities for themselves in the midst of surrounding conditions.

This influence was the Hampton-Tuskegee movement inaugurated by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong at Hampton, Virginia, in 1868 and expanded by his pupil, Booker T. Washington, at Tuskegee, in the years succeeding through the remarkable spread of his gospel of industry and self-reliance throughout the whole of the Negro race. In its early development it was called industrial education, but thoughtful observers have long since come to see that the work of Hampton and Tuskegee is not the training of men and women as mere units of industry, but rather the training of the individual, indeed to be self-supporting, but at the same time to be a contributing element to community life—to be conscious factors in every community for establishing the highest ideals of American life and inspiring all whom they touch to win salvation for themselves and to create by their own efforts that new and better order of things which it had been vainly hoped would come from the hands of others.

Hampton was the pioneer in this movement. Down in the Tidewater section, General Armstrong at the close of the Civil War took refugees that had gathered from the plantations of that section and began the solution of their problems by teaching them to work with their hands while they trained their minds, and developed the fundamental attributes of industry, thrift, self-reliance and self-respect. He worked, of course, with those who came to him, establishing a school to combine labor with books in the process of education; developing the head, the hand and the heart at the same time. But he did not stop there. He reached out to the homes and communities from which his students came and set up there for fathers and mothers the same standards and ideals of home surroundings and character development that he was creating for the young men and women who came to him as students. Home and community became the ultimate objectives of his labors. Boys and girls that came to him as students were impressed with the idea that their training was not merely for their individual success, but rather that they should be positive factors in improving life and conditions wherever they might locate.

Of all who came to him, the one pupil most apt to catch this vision was Booker T. Washington. Out he went from Hampton to translate his inspiration into deeds. Called to Alabama to take charge of a projected school, he immediately set himself to work out in terms of local conditions the ideas that were instilled in him at Hampton. From the very beginning he conceived of the whole South as his schoolroom and the entire Negro race as his class. The one subject which he taught was life. Arithmetic, reading, geography, history, were all interpreted in terms of the life surroundings of his students. He talked of the life they lived. Every day he put them to work creating life for themselves, building their own buildings, making their own tools, producing their own food, making their own clothes and in a hundred other ways supplying their own needs. These were the things they talked about in their class-rooms. These were the problems they figured out and then he talked of conditions as they had just left them at home. He went out to visit their parents. He went into their homes, into their churches, into their school-houses; having found the better way of life himself he carried his vision to his people, inspiring them to have things better for themselves and for their children and to win those things by their own industry and worth.

These two institutions have thus become vastly more than the conventional schools. They have their class-room work as do others, they study books, they write essays and deliver orations, but there is a character and a quality to it all that is unique. That is to say, that was unique, for the idea has spread abroad, and though Hampton and Tuskegee are unique exemplars of this larger conception and interpretation of education, yet the idea which they have developed has been appropriated by others. Not only those that style themselves industrial schools, but colleges also are grasping the importance of making their instruction touch life beyond the college walls, thus making their institutions centers of inspiration and elevation for that larger clientele which includes the households from which the students come and communities to which they go for service.

The influence of this gospel of larger and better living has not been without its effect upon the Negro race as a whole. These institutions have maintained specific agencies for reaching out into the body of the Negro race—farmers’ conferences, educational tours, extension departments in all of their ramifications, are an essential part of the work of Hampton and Tuskegee. While the boys and girls were being taught in the class-rooms, the fathers and mothers were being reached in the field and in the home; education was carried to them in simple direct terms made plain by demonstrations, with witnesses to testify how the plan had worked with them. The effect was as inspiring as a revival.

Booker Washington made a religion out of life for his people and few indeed were those who heard one of his talks who came away without getting this kind of religion. Everywhere in the South are to be found evidences of its influence. Negroes have been buying land for a generation till to-day about one-fourth of them own their homes. This is probably not true so largely of any other racial group in America. School facilities have been improved by leaps and bounds, because these institutions have inspired Negroes to undertake the solution of their own educational problems, building their own schools if necessary, supplementing directly out of their own pockets the salaries provided by the state and adding to the school term on their own initiative if the authorized school term was not long enough.

This impulse was extended even to business. A generation ago Negroes were the consumers, other races were the producers and distributors. The idea was set afloat that Negroes could profit by catering to the needs of their own people, that such profit would operate to create larger opportunities for their own race with a corresponding benefit both to the proprietor and to his patrons. To-day Negroes are found in all lines of business with many outstanding examples of success, as well as their own share of failures. In one of the Founder’s Day addresses at Tuskegee Institute, a prominent member of his own race said that Booker Washington had “changed a crying race into a trying race.” This phrase epitomizes the idea behind Hampton and Tuskegee. General Armstrong gave to the Negro race its first lessons in this sort of self-reliance. Booker Washington inspired the whole race with his confidence which is now being felt in the rapid strides with which the race is advancing.

For a time the South was hesitant as to the effect of this new gospel on the Negro. It welcomed the idea of teaching the Negro to work if that was what was meant by the “dignity of labor”—but for a time there was some apprehension lest behind this idea there should be a subtle force inspiring Negroes to rebel against unsatisfactory conditions and to resist the domination of the Anglo-Saxon who was in control of economic as well as political life in this section. But the years have proved these suspicions unfounded. The South has seen a great change come over the Negro. Education has been found to be profitable not only for the black man but for the white man too. To-day the South is more zealous for the improvement of educational conditions for both races than any other section of our country. What was heralded as good for the Negro has been accepted as equally good for white people. As “industrial education” it was accepted for the solution of Negro problems: as “vocational education” it has been adopted by state and federal governments as the solution of economic and social problems for both races. On this point Dr. Washington very early found a platform where both races could stand side by side with respect for themselves and for each other. Almost in spite of himself he became through this means a messenger of good will to both races and to both sections.

Through Hampton Institute large-minded men and women of the North expressed their interest in the Negro. Through Tuskegee Institute forward-looking men and women of the South found a way for renewing contacts with the Negro race. When Hollis Burke Frissell appeared on the scene at Hampton, the time was ripe for these three elements to join hands in inaugurating a new program for race relations in the South. To-day we hear much talk of inter-racial co-operation, but it began years ago. What was then the faith of a few has become the conviction of many. The confidence sown then is bringing forth a harvest of good-will now, and the field is being enlarged continually.

A great many unexpected results came out of the war. One of the earliest and most encouraging was the opening up of industrial opportunities for the Negro in the North. Then came the migration. In the wake of this movement many problems developed in both the North and the South. It became necessary to reconstruct the agricultural program of the South. The North was introduced to a new social program. A new bond of sympathy has been established between the two sections. What was considered a sectional problem has become a national problem. What has been considered a racial problem is coming more and more to be recognized as a purely human problem. These problems, however, are not as acute as they might have been because of the influence of Hampton and Tuskegee and of the other institutions like Howard, Virginia Union, Atlanta, Fisk, Morehouse, Clark and Biddle which have been exerting the same influence on the Negro race.

Negroes who went North were not all raw, unskilled laborers. Out of the industrial schools had come Negroes trained for the requirements of industry—blacksmiths, carpenters, brickmasons, plumbers, steam-fitters, auto-mechanics. When the opportunity came these men were ready for the test to which they were to be subjected. Though the great bulk of those who migrated had had no specific training in these lines, there were enough trained at Tuskegee and Hampton, and other industrial schools as well as in industrial plants in the South to make it feasible for Northern manufacturers to experiment with Negro mechanics. In all the industrial centers of the North and South graduates of these schools can be found, and it is a source of satisfaction that they have so far justified the experiment as to remove practically all doubt as to their availability for skilled work in whatever lines are open to them.

These laborers did not go alone, however, so broad was the current of migration that it carried along with it professional men and leaders in business and other lines of activity, trained in the schools of the South. Lawyers, doctors, dentists found it desirable to change their location to the new centers to which their clients had migrated. Even ministers, finding their congregations depleted by the movement, found it possible in not a few instances to establish churches in the North whose memberships were in a large measure composed of their former parishioners in the South.

The initial effect of this on the North was to create a housing problem. Residential sections inhabited formerly by whites were invaded by Negroes under the pressure of expanding population. One reaction to this was the riots in Washington, Chicago and Omaha. Not every city, however, witnessed such violent eruption; Springfield, Cleveland, Akron, Detroit, proceeded to absorb the influx of Negro population without apparent friction. This was nowhere better done than in New York City. Already densely populated, the metropolitan center proceeded to readjustments that have given it the largest Negro population of any city in the country and probably the world. The coming of this excess population presented to the real estate dealers an opportunity for increased profits of which they proceeded immediately to take advantage. Whole blocks of tenements and apartment houses were bought by speculators and turned over to Negro tenants, the former white occupants moving farther uptown. By accommodating themselves to limited quarters, many Negro families found comfortable residence in well-appointed modern livings, and that, too, without the annoyance or embarrassment of legal residence restrictions.

Harlem is recognized as the Negro section of New York without any requirement of law. Here Negroes have their own theaters, their own newspaper establishments, restaurants, stores, barber shops, offices, and all the other accessories and necessities of community life. White merchants still accommodate the bulk of the trade, and it is interesting to observe that groceries and meat markets have made it a point to cater to the tastes and habits that the Negro population have brought from the South. Restaurants serve those dishes to which Negroes have become accustomed, and the markets put in large supplies of these staple products, many of them specially imported from the Southern States.

In New York, as in other cities, there was no great difficulty for the newcomer to find work, but in this city a large proportion of these migrants went into personal service, whereas in other cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Youngstown, employment was found in the industries such as steel mills, automobile factories, and in Chicago the packing plants.

The important thing to observe in all this is that contrary to predictions and many expectations the Negro has found a real place for himself in the North, and has been able with surprising facility to adapt himself to the new conditions. In truth, it is a matter of pride to Negroes themselves to take on the manners and follow the customs that are characteristic of the North. It is surprising, also, to note the cordial and genuinely sympathetic attitude taken towards these newcomers by the older residents, colored and white, not the welfare workers merely, but many of the leading citizens. Newcomers are not infrequently carefully admonished by those who have preceded them as to their dress, manners and habits of speech lest they be ridiculed as having recently come from some Southern plantation.

Much of the easy solution of the housing problem in Northern cities, notably in Harlem, is due to the enterprise of Negro real estate men who have taken the initiative in finding homes for their people. In one city, Springfield, Massachusetts, it is a church that has taken the lead in solving this problem. In many places the Urban League, with other welfare movements, has taken the lead.

New lines of business have opened up with Negro proprietors where formerly no such business existed. It has very often been a surprise to Northern Negroes to witness the energy with which their brethren from the South have taken the leadership in community enterprise.

In the majority of cases the migrants have been quick to take advantage of the improved educational facilities of the North, and have sometimes precipitated the question of segregated schools, itself a tribute to the Negro’s eager desire for education. In time this must raise the question of an educational program which will enable the Negro youth to prepare themselves in advance for these new places in industry that are being opened to them. So long as the trade unions exclude Negroes from the opportunities of apprenticeship, it will be necessary for Negro youth to look elsewhere for their training. Some of these are already returning South to the industrial schools there, but these schools find it impossible even now to adequately accommodate their local applicants.

The factor in all this is the leadership of Negro men and women who have received their training in most cases in schools in the South, such as Hampton, Tuskegee, Howard, Fisk, Atlanta, Morehouse, Wiley; these will be found in the professions, in business, in social work, helping their people to take advantage of new opportunities and adjust themselves to new and sometimes hostile conditions.

These are but some of the indications that the leaven of Hampton and Tuskegee is working with increased force throughout the Negro race. It is a matter of common observation within the race that men and women who have been trained in these schools enter into community life with a zeal and enthusiasm which are characteristic. They ally themselves with the churches, literary societies, welfare movements, fraternal organizations and other activities that have for their object the improvement of the Negro race. They are demonstrating that Negroes can succeed where others have succeeded, that Negroes are capable of the same development which other races have manifested when given the same opportunity. In the pursuit of these aims they are developing a race consciousness—a pride, that is really inspiring. For the good name of their people they want to prove themselves worthy of every opportunity that is open to them and have every privilege that is their due as American citizens, and in proportion as they prove themselves capable they win the confidence and respect of the people of both races, and are counted as an asset to the industry, the organization and community with which they are identified. After all, the strongest recommendation that Hampton and Tuskegee have is the character and service of the men and women whom they have trained for the leadership of their people. It not infrequently happens that men and women have caught this same spirit and outlook in other schools—for there are other schools doing the same thing for their students—it generally happens that there is a most happy and effective co-operation between the men and women from all these schools for the highest development of their communities.