n out if he admitted aspirants of all ages and made no requirements as to previous training. He taught a school just like that in Malden. Tuskegee was different though because his ambitions for this new institution was much higher. He wanted his students to feel as though everyday at this school was a sacred day to the negro race. The requirements were; sixteen and older who can read and write. Washington had a "look clean" method for appearance just like Hampton. When there became fifty students he hired another teacher name Olivia A. Davidson, who later became his second wife. She brought an abundance of native intelligence, tact, organizational ability, broader training than him, and a wealth of valuable contacts in the East. At the end of the summer Washington purchased an abandoned plantation with a big house and four buildings for $500.00. By 1895 the enrollment had reached to eight hundred people with the property worth more than $2000,000. By 1895 Tuskegee could justify General Armstrong's description of it as "the best product of Negro enterprise of the century".Washington had become the national spokesman for the Black Race. His first trips to the north and the east established him as a speaker of uncommon ability's , and his reputation grew steadily, particularly n educational circles. In 1884, he addressed four thousand members of the National Education Association in Madison, Wisconsin. By 1888 he had served three terms as the president of the Alabama State Teachers' Association. In 1893 the Outlook, a popular magazine of the day, published his picture along with pictures of Eliot of Harvard, Dwight of Yale, and Potter of Princeton in a feature article on the nation's twenty-eight leading college presidents. He also stamped his name into people's life. He was asked to y the organizers of the Cotton States and International Exposition to deliver an address as a black representative to their industrial fair in Atlanta. The ev...
