BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S "WHITE GLOVES TEST"

Booker T. Washington's famous "White Gloves Test": Importance of Always Doing Your Very Best! Booker T. Washington taught many important life principles to our newly "freed" forefathers which helped to make them the marvels of the world. They had incredibly struggled up from oppression to become literate in one generation, and from being landless to landowners of 1/3 of American farmland by 1915. All by applying these vitally practical lessons passed down to them from and by Tuskegee's great founder. One of them was to always do your best. That is, to go back over your work, again and again, until it is free of imperfections of any kind; until it is something you are proud to show! In UP FROM SLAVERY, his classic, timeless, and much-too-seldom-read autobiography, he explains how he came to understand this lesson, vividly! He says that he had acquired a reputation for competence as a young man in West Virginia, which earned him an opportunity to apply for employment working as a cleaning boy for a demanding old New England spinster who lived in the area. She had a stern reputation for requiring punctuality and perfection from her cleaning boys, so she had gone through a slue of them, before getting to Booker T. She gave him a room to clean and returned to inspect it within an hour. Booker quickly cleaned the room, top to bottom, and proudly presented it to her upon her return. Upon her return, that spinster did the unthinkable: She pulled out a pair of white-gloves! Rubbing her hands in corners, under table tops, and in other out-of-the-way places, her gloves became quite dirty, naturally. Showing these to Booker T, she told him that unless he could pass her "white gloves test," that he would not be hired as her house boy. Booker T desperately wanted that job, so he begged for another opportunity to clean that room, which he granted. This time, Booker T cleaned and re-cleaned, scrubbed and re-scrubbed, swept and re-swept, mopped and re-mopped, dusted and re-dusted, and waxed and re-waxed, until that room was spic-and-span, spotless. He got the job! This time, knowing her extremely high standards, he had fully and faithfully applied himself to the job at hand, and he had passed that stern lady's "white gloves test!" But, more importantly, he had learned an invaluable life lesson, which he applied successfully and repeatedly in his own life. He became thereby widely known as "Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington, the 'Wizard of Tuskegee!" He employed Dr. George Washington Carver, an immortal soil scientist and inventor. He also employed the first black architect with a college degree, Robert Taylor, who designed the campus and its many structures. Washington's rules, clues, lessons, instructions, and attributes he passed down in time, and in turn, to us all in his 12 or 13 books that he authored, and through his college's programs and graduates. He taught that in whatsoever you do for yourselves or for another, whether at work, leisure, or at play, always do your very best without fail. "White gloves" easily incriminate fake diligence, and, they are ever vigilant to impugn and to correct!