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Today in American History
On this day in history — July 4, 1881 — Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, known today as Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Alabama, held its first day of class.
Booker T. Washington served as the school’s founding principal and presided over the first day of class– which, due to significant lack of resources, was held in a one-room church. The first official building on campus was erected by Washington and the students themselves, one year later.
“More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honored and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but a fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my color to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort.”
