Humility

Professor Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was an Afro-American orator, author and educator. Soon after he became President of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a white woman saw him walking and asked him if would like to earn a few dollars by chopping some wood for her.  The professor smiled, rolled up his sleeves and started chopping. When he had finished, he placed the wood next to her fireplace. A young girl saw him, and told the white woman that the man she asked to help her was professor Washington. So next day the woman went to his office at the Institute and apologized to him for asking him to do such menial work. He brushed it off smiling at her saying ‘It’s OK, I enjoy doing some manual work once in a while.’ She told him how impressed she was by his humility. A few years later that woman asked some of her friends to give a handsome amount of money to the Tuskegee Institute. Professor Washington wrote later on ‘the happiest people are those who feel happy helping those in need.’ In his University many great students studied, including George Carver Washington and many pilots who flew planes during World War II.