The excerpt below is from the General Introduction to Tuskegee and Its People by Booker T. Washington:
Institutions, like individuals, are properly judged by their ideals, their methods, and their achievements in the production of men and women who are to do the world's work.
One school is better than another in proportion as its system touches the more pressing needs of the people it aims to serve, and provides the more speedily and satisfactorily the
elements that bring to them honorable and enduring success in the struggle of
life. Education of some kind is the first essential of the young man, or young woman, who would lay
the foundation of a career. The choice of the school to which one will go and the calling he will
adopt must be influenced in a very large measure by his environments, trend of
ambition, natural capacity, possible opportunities in the proposed calling, and the
means at his command.
In the past twenty-four years thousands of the youth of this and other lands have elected to come to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute to secure what they deem the
training that would offer them the widest range of usefulness in the
activities open to the masses of the Negro people. Their hopes, fears, strength, weaknesses, struggles, and
triumphs can not fail to be of absorbing interest to the great body of American
people, more particularly to the student of educational theories and their attendant results.
How does Washington conclude that the graduates of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute will influence America?
They will set the standard for the future education of minorities.
They will radically change American industry through their exceptional training.
Their successes and failures in industry will bring attention to racial and civil rights issues.
They will serve the pressing needs of minorities by becoming teachers.
