Tuskegee Alumni Give So Others May Succeed

The oldest of these alumni graduated from Tuskegee back in 1939, the grandson of a slave whose family was run out of a Florida town by the Klan. The youngest, who graduated in 2003, never sat in a segregated bus or witnessed a lynching.

Yet these and other alumni share a commitment to Tuskegee University in Alabama that has survived time and distance. They are graduates who live as though the school song were a script for their lives: “We will love thee forever, and ever shall walk, Thro’ the oncoming years at thy side.”

From their founding 100 years ago, Tuskegee alumni clubs around the country have been strong supporters of the school and its legacy as a historically black institution. Nationwide, there are 75 such clubs.

The regional alumni gathering held at a Las Vegas hotel in June attracted 55 people, including a retired Air Force colonel and the former vice president of a religious school, who attended workshops on fundraising, recruitment, academic requirements and scholarships so they can better help others succeed.

“I do it because it’s the only way the school is going to survive,” said Pat Johnson, a 1975 graduate, who lives in Colorado. “Plus, you get to see all the people you went to school with. It’s fun on top of everything else.”

Tuskegee was founded by Booker T. Washington on July 4, 1881, in a one-room shanty with the mission of educating former slaves at a time when other institutions were closed to them.

The next year, the Normal School for Colored Teachers, as it was known, moved to 100 acres of a former plantation where slaves once toiled. Tuskegee was the home of renowned scientist, educator and inventor George Washington Carver and the training ground of the Tuskegee airmen, the first African Americans to serve in the Army Air Forces unit.

The university holds a vaunted place in the mind of Los Angeles resident Frank Godden, 94. A full 66 years after his graduation he is still close to the Washington family, and he still quotes Washington: “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”

In April, Washington’s great-granddaughter, Gloria Y. Jackson, 55, spoke to the local alumni.

“I wanted to let people know it wasn’t just Tuskegee,” Jackson said. “Booker T. Washington was truly a national leader and absolutely believed [black people] could achieve whether people liked us or not.”

In his time Washington was a controversial figure. He was loved for his work in providing generations of black people with the education and training other institutions denied them. But he also was vilified as an accommodationist and later as an “Uncle Tom” for emphasizing separate training and education that allowed for economic survival over the push for political rights advocated by other leaders.

Godden knows Washington’s legacy well. He started at Tuskegee in grade school, continued through high school and college, and then was appointed to the board of trustees. For him, it will always be home.

“My friends say, ‘Frank, you act like Tuskegee is the only school.’ I say, ‘Just about.’ ”

The school’s history is his own. He worked as Carver’s office assistant, baby-sat for the Washington family, knew the school’s presidents. Over the years Godden has served as the local alumni president and in other positions, sent check after check and promoted the school to any young person who would listen.

In Los Angeles, graduates of Tuskegee were instrumental in the founding of the city’s chapter of the National Urban League in 1921. More recently, they have also helped build housing for low-income seniors. And they continue to add students to the school’s roster and money to its coffers.

During the convention in Las Vegas, a representative of each alumni club was called to announce the group’s donations to “Mother Tuskegee.” This was like offering time at church, only the giver was on stage and in the spotlight. No one donated the multimillion-dollar gifts that send school officials scurrying to rename buildings.

“Can you top that?” the moderator asked after one club’s $5,000 gift.

About 52% of all Tuskegee alumni have participated in the school’s capital campaign, which started in 2001, said Shereitte Charles Stokes III, Tuskegee’s vice president for university advancement. Nationwide, 13.2% of alumni give to their schools. In 2004, 27.5% of all support for higher education came from alumni.

“I call it the Tuskegee mystique,” Stokes said.

Over the last two years alumni have contributed about $2 million; non-monetary contributions are hard to measure. Like Johnson, many of those who give are driven by a sense of devotion and school pride that extends well beyond graduation.

“Gifts such as these ... keep the doors of Tuskegee open and help students along the way, just as you were helped when you were there,” Willie Burnett, director of alumni affairs, recently told alumni from the Western states.

Big donations make big headlines. But people who will never sign a million-dollar check to the school play a major role in the life of a university. With weekend barbecues, golf tournaments, cruises and other events, they raise money for the school and scholarships.

“How can you say ‘no’ to an institution that has been as good to you as Tuskegee has been?” said Joe Thomas of Benicia, in Northern California, a 1958 graduate and former national alumni president who spoke at the convention

Years ago, Della McZeal, a 1945 graduate, worked in the alumni office as a student, typing thank-you notes to those who donated. “If we got a check for $50, that was a big one.”

Back then it cost $26.75 a month to attend Tuskegee, “and that was room, board and tuition,” she said, laughing. “I had a Rockefeller scholarship, so my parents didn’t have to pay that.”

Today, Tuskegee’s more than 3,000 students pay about $12,000 a year in tuition and $6,000 for room and board. It costs more than $67 million a year to operate the school.

“Many of us pass by that statue of Booker T. Washington pulling the veil of ignorance off that young man,” said the Rev. Fred Glass, a retired Air Force colonel who serves as chaplain of the national alumni association. “Tuskegee did that for a lot of us. Without that university, many of us would not be where we are today. I, for one, thank Tuskegee.”