I owe much of my success in the work here to the cheerful and freely given counsel at all times of Hon. W. L. Palmer, Representative in the State Legislature, and to the members of the Board of Public Instruction of this (Orange) county.
The colored people have had little to give in cash, but have been most liberal in their contributions of labor. They have been willing to help themselves.
My constant, my most earnest desire is to prove myself worthy of my opportunities, that I may continue to be a worthy representative of Tuskegee. I feel that I owe all that I am, all that I can hope to be, to the training of my mother, to the constant help and counsel of my wife, and to Tuskegee, my Tuskegee, from which I have received so many lessons that have been of incalculable help to me. I look back to my lessons in carpentry, as well as to all the others, with gratitude for the thoroughness insisted upon in all directions. I was rescued from a life of aimlessness, and put in the way of doing something of good for my fellows.
I was born in the town of Henderson, State of Kentucky, January 1, 1867. My father and mother were both slaves. My father rendered service during the Civil War as a Union soldier.
As early as I can remember there was in Henderson a public free school for colored children. In 1872 there came to our town a young man from Louisville, Ky., John K. Mason by name, to take charge of the school. How he secured his education I never learned, but that he devoted his life to the uplift of his race is everywhere in that section clearly in evidence. Unfortunately, I was not permitted as a boy to go to school, but became a factory lad instead; for, almost before I was old enough to begin my education, I was put to work in a tobacco factory, and there I remained. From childhood to manhood I think I spent, all told, not more than three years in school.
Somehow I had a faint idea of the value of education, and manifested a desire for learning by securing the services of a young man, whose country-school term had expired, to give me lessons at night when not otherwise engaged. He was quite a "society" man, so that my school-nights were few in number.
While my father did not provide for my education, he was himself an industrious man and provided that I should not be idle. Each year, when the tobacco season was over, I had regular employment in a cooper-shop with my father, and I learned to make barrels and hogsheads. This trade I found to be quite valuable, for before I was twenty-one years of age I was able to demand wages of two dollars a day as a cooper.