It came about that in the year 1880, in Macon County, Alabama, a
certain ex-Confederate colonel conceived the idea that if he could
secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he
coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly the colonel went to
the leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he
could do to secure the Negro vote, for Negroes then voted in Alabama
without restriction. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an
ex-slave, promptly replied that what his race most wanted was
education, and what they most needed was industrial education, and
that if he (the colonel) would agree to work for the passage of a
bill appropriating money for the maintenance of an industrial school
for Negroes, he, Adams, would help to get for him the Negro vote and
the election. This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave
was made and faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that
the following year the Legislature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a
year for the establishment of a normal and industrial school for
Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General
Armstrong, of Hampton Institute, a young colored man, Booker T.
Washington, a recent graduate of and teacher at the Institute, was
called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless,
teacherless, and studentless institution of learning.



(2)

(_Leslie's Weekly_)

MILLIONAIRES MADE BY WAR