It was difficult for these people to see how
education would produce any other kind of a coloured man. . . .
On the morning that the school opened thirty students reported for
admission. I was the only teacher. The students were about equally
divided between the sexes. . . . The greater part of the thirty were
public school teachers, and some of them were nearly forty years of age.
At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the
school as a co-teacher. This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later
became my wife. . . .
Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school
from the first. The students were making progress in learning books
and in developing their minds; but it became apparent at once, that, if
we were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
for training, we must do something besides teach them mere books. The
students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies. With few
exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
but little improvement upon those from which they had come.
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