Soul Food Wednesday With Booker T. Washington by Carla

Soul Food Wednesday With Booker T. Washington by Carla - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

Mr. Booker T. Washington and I take our seats in the Tuskegee University’s new cafeteria. Around us, students are engaging in jovial conversation, studying together, and enjoying Soul Food Wednesday. Mr. Washington’s mouth curls into a content smile. “To think all of this came from the simple dream of a slave boy,” he says. He eats grilled chicken and collard greens, and I have the same.
I am delighted to have dinner with Booker T. Washington tonight because we both share the value of hard work, dedication, and patience. Regardless of the obstacles lying in our way, we search for the confidence to do what we know is right. Through my volunteer service, I strive to practice the same virtues of patience and selflessness. His words, “If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else up” have stuck with me, and remind me of the value of service.
I admire Booker T. Washington’s audacity in seeking his education. If I think juggling AP and honors courses is hard, I can only imagine the struggle of balancing school without any encouragement from his peers while holding several laborious jobs. Some of my peers loathe going to school; Meanwhile, I embrace my education. Like Booker T. Washington embraced something as simple as learning to read and write, I appreciate the complex and mind- opening coursework I take on.
As a teen, I can be self conscious and worry “what people think”. Listening to Booker T. Washington I can see that he not only rejected the critics of society, but embraced the low manner in which society once viewed him and his race. As opposed to other headstrong Civil Rights leaders of his time, he encouraged his fellow African Americans to learn a trade and impress upon others a display of hard work. Thus, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was born under his leadership.
For Booker T. Washington, actions truly do speak louder than words. When I worry about taking a test or completing a project, I consider his tenacity. When I put my all into what I strive to do, that is when I do my best. Washington has given me the courage to carve my own path.
In addition to inspiring me as a person and worker, Booker T. Washington inspires me as a writer. He moved the world with words, as I aspire to, by publishing his autobiography, Up From Slavery and writing a groundbreaking speech for the 1895 Atlanta Expo. “No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem,” he once said.
This dinner with Booker T. Washington is one I will never forget. Before I head back to New York, he leaves me with the words, “Success is not to be measured as much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.”