The Tuskegee Institute - How A Single School Shaped Black Education

The Tuskegee Institute - How A Single School Shaped Black Education

    It started with no building, no land, and $2,000 that could only be spent on teacher salaries.

    That was the situation Booker T. Washington walked into on July 4, 1881, when he opened the doors of what would become the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. His "campus" was a borrowed shanty next to an African American church. His first class had 30 students (AURN).

    Washington was 25 years old and just six years removed from his own graduation at Virginia's Hampton Institute. He'd been born enslaved in 1856 and had walked hundreds of miles as a teenager just to get an education (Library of Congress). Now the state of Alabama had chartered a school and handed him almost nothing to build it with. The students built it themselves. They made their own bricks, laid them, and constructed the campus buildings by hand — turning construction into a classroom in masonry and self-reliance (National Park Service).

    Washington's approach wasn't accidental. He believed Black Southerners would gain acceptance and economic footing faster through practical, vocational skills — farming, carpentry, dressmaking, teaching — than through pushing for immediate social and political integration (Study.com). It worked, in the sense that it disarmed white opposition and drew major funding from Northern industrialists. But it was also controversial from the start. Critics, most famously W.E.B. Du Bois, argued Washington's model asked Black Americans to accept a subordinate status in exchange for economic crumbs, and that it shortchanged higher academic and professional ambitions (core.ac.uk).

    In 1896, Washington recruited a botanist named George Washington Carver to run the agriculture department. Carver spent the next 47 years at Tuskegee, developing crop-rotation techniques and finding hundreds of new uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes — work that helped push the South away from its ruinous dependence on cotton (Encyclopedia of Alabama). Carver didn't just stay in the lab. He and Tuskegee sent a horse-drawn "Jesup Wagon," and later a motorized "Movable School," out to rural Black farmers who couldn't come to campus, bringing modern techniques directly to the field (Encyclopedia of Alabama).

    Tuskegee's influence didn't stay inside Alabama. Its graduates went on to found schools across the South, multiplying its reach far beyond its own campus (George Washington Carver Life). Its hospital, John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital, became a training ground for Black doctors and nurses at a time when segregated medicine left them almost nowhere else to go. Decades later, the institute's airfield became the training site for the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military aviators in the U.S. armed forces, cementing the campus's role in yet another chapter of civil rights history (Encyclopedia of Alabama).

    Today, the school is Tuskegee University, and its original campus was designated a National Historic Site in 1974 — the only national park unit centred on a college campus (National Park Service). What began as a shanty with no land and no building became one of the most consequential Black institutions in American history — not because it had resources, but because it built its own.

    AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in this blog post to come up with the research for the post as well as to frame the paragraphs.

Eight Values of Freedom - Free Expression

Eight Values - Free Expression 

I think the fourth Value of Free Expression - individual self-fulfillment aka self-actualization, is the Value of Free Expression that resonates the most with me, feels the most important, and is the most personal to me. I also think it’s one of the things we see the most in action today especially in social media. 

Individual self-fulfillment is freedom of speech, it enables people to express themselves however they want which lets people form and express their own personal identity. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression of personal-identity is a core aspect of human dignity, human agency and bodily autonomy. This feels the most important to me because if you cannot form you own personal identity then you will have a land of mindless people. 

We see individual self-fulfillment in action every single day. We see it in the differences between people in our everyday life, we see it in the different social media personalities online. Social media is the main way we see this and it’s a main way to help someone with self-actualization and free expression. Content creators build their platforms on free expression, without it then we wouldn’t be able to have so many different kinds of consumable media. 

Something going on in the real world that involves free expression, and free expression can explain something is the news and what’s happening with the American Government. If we didn’t have free expression then news outlets and social media influencers wouldn’t be able to report truthfully on the negative things going on with the government. An example of when free expression was impeded was in 2020 during COVID under the Biden Government when scientists' accounts were heavily censored and hidden. Their free expression was impeded and therefore they couldn’t share facts to the greater American community.

Slavery and the Bible

Slavery And The Bible  

 The Bible is very clear, slavery is not only something that’s expected, it’s something that’s good, even a blessing from God. In Genesis 24:35 it says “The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.”. This shows that slaves are treated as a gift from the Lord.

    In Ephesians 6:5-9 the bible says “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ, not with a slavery performed merely for looks, to please people, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul.” It also says, “...whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are enslaved or free.”. This shows that slaves were told to obey their masters as they obey Christ. It also says that both slaves and masters will receive the same good they do again by the Lord, showing that even though they are slaves, masters and slaves will go to the same place in death.

    Lastly in Exodus 21:2-11 the bible says “When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt.”. This shows that you cannot have a slave for longer than six years, that after a slave has served for seven years he will be free. However, the bible also says in Leviticus 24:44-46 “You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.”. This directly goes against what is said in Exodus 21:2-11, because it says you may keep them and your children after you may inherit them, which signals that slaves are allowed to be kept for longer than 7 years. 

    As we can see through my evidence, the bible is very clear, it condones slavery. It is iffy on the finer details-how long you can have them, where you can take them from, who they serve-but it is clear, slavery, in the eyes of the Lord, is approved.

Supreme Court Video Reflection

     In class we watched two videos, there was a part 1 and a part 2. Both videos were about the Supreme Court. The video's helped me understand how powerful and important the Supreme Court is, but also how much its power depends on the trust of the American people.

    
The Supreme Court is the highest judicial body in the United States, with nine justices who interpret the Constitution and decide cases that come before them. I found it interesting that the Court cannot simply choose the issues it wants to address. Instead, people must bring cases to the Court, and the justices decide which cases they will hear through certiorari, which is the power to choose which appeals to accept.

     I learned that Supreme Court decisions involve so much more than simply voting. During oral arguments, the justices question lawyers and use their answers to explore important issues. Afterwards, the justices meet privately to discuss and vote on the cases they had talked about.

    The justice assigned to write the majority opinion may revise it several times while trying to persuade the other justices. This showed me that compromise and persuasion can play a major role in the Court's decisions, and it's is not uncommon that there is a lot of persuading within the courts. 

     Another important point was that the Court's authority comes largely from the Constitution and the public's acceptance of its decisions. Unlike the president or Congress, the Supreme Court has no army or police force to enforce its rulings. Its legitimacy depends on people believing that it is interpreting and following the law. Overall, I learned that the Supreme Court has enormous influence over American society, but its power is closely connected to the Constitution and the trust of the people. 

    AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in a limited way in this assignment. I took ample notes while watching a 20 minute video about the US Supreme Court. I then personalized those notes by adding my point of view, for example, things I learned and found exciting. I then used Claude AI to help me clean up the text for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I also asked the tool to help me shape it into the form of a blog post. I then edited the text added links and added images and captions.