Service on the Holidays

In Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, I read Chapter 9, "Anxious Days and Sleepless Nights." It was about the respect and support that the Tuskegee Institute got from whites and African-Americans. And Booker encouraged the students of Tuskegee to make friends with their neighbors, whomever they might be.

I liked the following passage, which is about service on the holidays:

"At the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the Christmas and Thanksgiving seasons at Tuskegee is the unselfish and beautiful way in which our graduates and students spend their time in administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the unfortunate. Not long ago some of our young men spent a holiday in rebuilding a cabin for a helpless coloured woman who is about seventy-five years old. At another time I remember that I made it known in chapel, one night, that a very poor student was suffering from cold, because he needed a coat. The next morning two coats were sent to my office for him."

I also learned that Booker T. Washington had a first wife, Fannie Smith, who also worked with the school. She passed on in 1884. In 1885, he married Olivia Davidson, who taught at the school.