Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 2

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[415] my supervision from 1865 to 1870 and continued for more than twenty-five years, having had a constant development. The last year of my administration of the educational work among refugees and freedmen, I reported 70 schools, graded high enough at least to educate teachers. In 1904 there were open to the colored students, i. e., especially intended for them, 128 such institutions and 131 public high schools. Many of the original 70 have been absorbed in the total, often under new names.

More and more has the education of those who were once wards of the Government taken a practical turn, and much stress has been put upon industrial features. There has been no cessation of demand for well-: trained colored youth, and no diminution of interest on the part of the descendants of the freedmen in seeking for that knowledge which will fit them for the common duties of life. To show how great things spring from small in this matter, notice the work of a single graduate of Hampton: Booker T. Washington. He graduated in the class of 1875; he taught school three terms in West Virginia; he took further studies at Wayland Seminary, Washington, D. C., and returning in 1880 to Hampton he taught Indians till 1881; then, recommended by General Armstrong to found a State normal school at Tuskegee, Ala., he was appointed principal. He commenced the school with thirty pupils in a colored church, with an outfit of $2,000 and nothing besides.

Washington wrote in 1896: “Beginning July 4, 1881, without a dollar except the annual appropriation ($2,000), during the thirteen years there has come into our treasury $491,955.42 in cash from all sources.” During the thirteen years it is notable that the students