HUMILITY

Mansfield's Book of Manly Men (211-220)

• Few men have modeled the deeds of humility quite lie the man...Booker T. Washington.
• "To a very extraordinary degree, he combined the humility and dignity; and I think that the explanation of his extraordinary degree of success in a very difficult combination was due to the fact that at the bottom of his humility was really the outward expression, not of a servile attitude toward any man, but of the spiritual fact that in very truth he walked humbly with his God." ~ Theodore Roosevelt on Booker T. Washington
• He was born to a slave woman on a Virginia farm in 1856. A census taken a few years later listed him as “1 Negro Boy (Booker)–$400.” 
• It was there he became an employee of Viola Ruffner, a demanding New England schoolteacher who gave him his first lessons in responsibility. In later years, he attributed much of what he became to her influence.
• after teaching there for a season, moved to Alabama to open a newly chartered school with the name Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.
• He believed character, cleanliness, industriousness, skill, godliness, and patience would mean advancement for black America.
• He believed unearned wealth would harm his race and leave them forever an underclass. He was certain that “habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of property, bank accounts” would lead to his people’s ascent. It was the message he preached to the nation and the guiding principle of his work at Tuskegee.
• At the heart of Booker T. Washington’s vision for blacks was confidence in the power of humility”
• Yet Mr. Washington also taught that doing humility is the path to being humble. Do humble deeds, he taught, and a humble heart will follow.
• Character is not out of our reach. It is not a lifelong battle to organize our emotions. Instead, it is a decision to act and to act consistently, knowing that emotions are usually a result and not a cause.
• How liberating this is. A man can say to his son as men can say to each other, “Go be humble,” and the words require no need to manage feelings. Just do what is right; do what is humble. God will see and work in you to see his will complete.
• I FIND MORE AND MORE THAT TRUE HUMILITY CONSISTS IN BEING SUBMISSIVE TO THOSE WHO ARE A LITTLE ABOVE OR A LITTLE BELOW US. OH, WHEN SHALL I COME TO REJOICE IN OTHERS’ GIFTS AND GRACES AS MUCH AS IN MY OWN!”—George Whitefield