Mampton Sftetcbes 
 
 Johnson of Hampton 
 
 institute prraa 
 ifaut|ttan. ISfrginia 
 
this sketch has appeared 
 in the " utica press." the 
 " boston transcript," the 
 " youth's companion," and 
 the " southern workman." 
 
JOHNSON OF HAMPTON 
 
 BY EDWARD L. CHICHESTER 
 
 Assistant Chaplain at Hampton Institute 
 
 ¥N order to give some idea of the work 
 * done at Hampton Institute, it is cus- 
 tomary to refer to the school's record 
 and point to the fact that 36 educational 
 leaders ( a list headed by the name of 
 Booker T. Washington ) have gone out 
 from Hampton ; that the school has sent 
 out 2092 tradesmen and farmers ; that 
 1618 of its girls are homekeepers, and so 
 on, with a long list of telling figures, 
 but to give an idea of the peculiar 
 quality of its work is not so easy. This 
 work is unobtrusive in the doing and its 
 most significant results do not lend 
 themselves readily to analysis or tabula- 
 tion. 
 
 About four years ago I was going 
 through the dairy and saw a tall, awk- 
 ward looking Negro washing milk cans. 
 I asked his name. " Johnson." I asked 
 him where he was from, and straighten- 
 ing himself up, he looked at me in a be- 
 wildered way and answered, "Alabama." 
 
 "What did you do at home?" 
 
" I worked with my father on the 
 farm." 
 
 " Did your father own his place? " 
 
 "No, he didn't own anything, but," 
 brightening up, "he's made the first 
 payment on a home since I came here to 
 school." 
 
 The boy's influence had told. Hope 
 and ambition had come to that black 
 laborer down at Alabama because his son 
 had sent in a report of a new and broader 
 outlook for his people. A year or 
 two after this I was in the Grand Central 
 Station in New York, and saw this same 
 youth clutching* his baggage and look- 
 ing about him in a bewildered way. A 
 man he had expected to meet, who would 
 take him across the city, was not on hand. 
 
 " How did you happen to be in New 
 York? " I asked. 
 
 He told me that he had been working 
 through the summer with a dairy farmer 
 in Connecticut, and was on his way to 
 Hampton. 
 
 " Did you like the work? " 
 
 "Yes, and he wants me to come back 
 next year." 
 
 Progress again. This boy was desired. 
 Slow, unpolished, unprepossessing, if 
 you will, but desired where he had 
 worked. Some progress was being made 
 
here toward the solution of the Negro 
 problem. 
 
 Last summer I saw him again. He was 
 on the grounds at Hampton, wearing a 
 uniform with stripes betokening official 
 rank. His carriage was erect and soldier- 
 ly. He was still slow and deliberate in 
 speech and movement, but his eye was 
 clear, and he looked at you when he 
 spoke. We shook hands cordially and I 
 asked him what he was doing now. 
 
 " I am in charge of the dairy," he said. 
 The sup rintendent was away on his 
 vacation. " We are milking thirty cows 
 and making certified milk " — milk that I 
 learned later went to the sick babies at 
 Norfolk. 
 
 " How does the inspector rate your 
 milk?" 
 
 "We are getting ninety-six and niuety- 
 eight per cent," he said, and seemed 
 rather dissatisfied. " I am trying to 
 make it one hundred, but I haven't done 
 it yet," he added in his slow, dogged 
 way. 
 
 He took me over the dairy. Every 
 thing was scrupulously clean. The 
 cattle looked fine. He knew every one, 
 her pedigree, her peculiarities, her capac- 
 ity, just what she ate, and what ration 
 was required to produce the best results. 
 
" Can you analyze the feed?" I asked. 
 " O yes." 
 
 " And the milk. Can you test it your- 
 self?" 
 
 " Yes ; that is easy," he answered. 
 
 A number of boys were at work and 
 he directed them with a quiet word that 
 met instant response. Here were intelli- 
 gence and force — some progress since 
 this son of a Negro laborer in Alabama 
 had come to Hampton to get an educa- 
 tion. 
 
 "Do you like your work?" I asked. 
 
 His eye kindled. "'Yes," he said, as 
 undemonstrative as ever. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon fifty or so of the 
 students belonging to the Young Men's 
 Christian Association were gathered in 
 their meeting room. Johnson was among 
 them. They were singing the old-time 
 songs, " whose magic," as an eloquent 
 writer has said, "mingles passion of 
 tropic barbarism, rapture of saints and 
 prophets, child-hearted gaiety, pathos of 
 centuries of slavery and ecstacy of the 
 hour of freedom." It is hard for the 
 suppressed Anglo-Saxon to let himself 
 go with the tide to this music, but he 
 feels its tug at his heart strings, and he 
 likes to hear it. After they had sung 
 for a time, one and another got up and 
 
spoke. Johnson rose slowly to his feet. 
 Words came hard, but he succeeded in 
 telling his fellow students, in the same 
 slow way that he talked about his work, 
 that his life was devoted to doing God's 
 service in the world, that his knowledge 
 and skill were not self-centered but 
 devoted. Then he sat down. 
 
 You feel as if something worth while 
 had been done here. From an ignorant 
 Negro boy had come a man. In the 
 reports of the school he will be listed as 
 one more farmer, but the essence of the 
 work accomplished here eludes all 
 classification. It is impossible to tell 
 what Hampton Institute and schools 
 like it all over the country are doing for 
 the children of the backward races, but 
 as one meets with its slow, black John- 
 sons, he feels what no figures can 
 express.