Macon County Alabama Genealogy and History Community News Stories  The Extension Activities of Alabama's Great School for Negro Youth--"The Tuskegee Idea"-What It Means-What the School is Doing for Negro Farmers. The most successful Summer School for Negro Teachers held last year. Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kansas, enrolled andcrowded with eager teachers. TUSKEGEE SUMMER SCHOOL FOR TEACHERS. Summer school for Negro Teachers held last summer was at Tusegee Institute,, where 404 teachers representing Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi. A more responsive set of teachers never enrolled in a summer school. The classes began at seven o'clock in the morning, and to the end were crowded with eager teachers. A MODEL RURAL SCHOOL Some years ago, in accordance with the Tuskegee Idea that a school ought to do something for its community, the Tuskegee Institute started out to see what it could do to improve the conditions among the colored people in Macon County. The first thing attempted was to start a model Negro rural school, a school that would embody as far as possible the ideas which Principal "Washington had been preaching to his people for a number of years. At that time there was a little Negro community on the outskirts of Tuskegee called "-Rising Star". Tho center of this community was a little church and a broken-down and dilapidated school. The experiment was then started of converting this unsightly building into a model country school. In the place of the old building there was erected a comfortable five-room houso resembling in stylo and general appearance the cottage of some of tho more prosperous Negro farmers of the neighborhood. Around this building was located a stable, out buildings, flower garden in front and a vegetable garden behind; and two teachers, a man and his wife, were employed to make their home in this building and at the'same time to teach school. At the present time all the rooms as well as the garden and stable are used diffrent times in thi day in teaching students the ordinary duties o the farmer and his wife in that part of the country. Here the children learn to make the beds and toclean, dust, and arrange the sitting room, noon they go into the kitchen, where they taught to lay the table and serve a fanner's meal. It is interesting to observe the effect of this teaching on the fathers and mothers of the children who attend this school. As soon as fathers discovered that their boys were learning at school to tell how much their pigs, cotton, and corn were worth, the fathers (who had been more or less disappinted with the results of the revious education) felt that the school was really worth something after all. When the girls began to ask their mothers to let them take their dresses to school so that they might larn to patch and mend and these mothers befan to get an entirely new idea of what school meant. Later, when these girls were taught to make simple garments in the school room, their mothers became still more interested., They began to attend the "mothers meetings," and before long there was genuine enthuslasm in that community--not only for the school and its teachers, but for the household improvement that they taught. Once the parents realized thehousehold improvement they began a crusade of whitewashing and general cleaning-up. Houses that had never know a coat of whitewash began to assume a neat and attractive appearance. Better than all else, under the inspiration of this school and of the other schools like it, the whole spirit of this sommunity and others throughout the country improved. This enthused spirit at the school extended to the minister and to the church and the connection with the moral life of the community. One of the effects of this has been that farmers from other parts of Alabama and from other states have been moving in and buying land. During the last eight or nine years Negro farmers have purchased the more land in Macon County than they did in the previous forty years.The last census shows that Macon County was one of the Black Belt counties in Alabama that instead of losing population increased it. At the same time, Macon County, is one of the most orderly, well-conducted counties in the state. Macon County has probably the best Negro schools and the best Negro teachers of any county in the state. Source: Montgomery Advertiser, Sunday Morning,  March 25, 1914; Submitted by Jo Ann Scott ©2008 Genealogy Trails