Three generations of Eneas’ have graduated from Tuskegee. The first was my uncle, Cleveland Eneas, who was brought to Tuskegee by his father, Bishop W.V.Eneas of the Church of God, at the age of sixteen years old to finish his secondary education.When he entered,it was called Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and had recently celebrated its fiftieth birthday. I was the second generation and my son and Uncle’s grandson were the third generation.

He was initially enrolled in the Trades as the goal was for him to become a printer.Because of his academic background, he was able to graduate in the  1933 class of Tuskegee Institute High School and in 1937 received his B.Sc. in High School Education.With the sciences, he  gained entrance at Meharry Medical College where in 1941,he earned D.D.S.which qualified him to practice as a dentist.

Tuskegee: A Beacon 

For my grandfather and others in the African Diaspora, be they in the Caribbean or  in Mother Africa, Tuskegee was a beacon  as an  educational institution   that was created by Booker T.Washington.Tuskegee’s reputation in The Bahamas was so notable that an official delegation from a British governed  Bahamas was sent to celebrate Tuskegee’s 50th anniversary in 1931.The delegation comprised two black men, the Hon.T.A.Toote,a prominent  attorney and member of Parliament and Mr Etienne Dupuch, who later became Sir Etienne, was  also a member of Parliament and Editor of the prestigious Nassau Daily Tribune.Over the years, the  government had been sending Bahamians for training as educators.

Tuskegee Relays

The Tuskegee connection with The Bahamas was not confined to academics   but also to sports, the Tuskegee Relays. The Relays for Bahamians meant travel and engagement not specifically in  track and field but tennis.The tennis tournament was like the Negro Nationals in which the best players in The Bahamas and Black America participated.Howard Wise, who won a several SIAC Tennis Championships for Tuskegee when I was there, was coached in Atlanta by a Bahamian , Coach Minnis, who came to play in the tournament and was given an athletic scholarship.

Foreign Students

When I left Tuskegee in 1965,there were three foreign students associations:African,Caribbean and Foreign.There were about 500 foreign students from chiefly the British former colonies like Ghana, Nigeria,Kenya and virtually all of the former British Caribbean colonies like Jamaica,Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad.Foreign students enriched the student body.They provided a cultural diversity which one could only experience in a setting such as Tuskegee.We were able to   establish lifelong relationships with those in the diaspora from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa and, occasionally, from India.

When I went to visit Tuskegee in 2019,I was surprised by two factors;the condition of the town of Tuskegee and the number of foreign students had dramatically declined.Auburn was booming and Tuskegee was an economic basket case.

Rise of National Universities

Tuskegee’s source of foreign students had dried up because of several reasons: because  colonialism had ended and the winds of political change had ushered in the Independence Era in all of these former colonies that sent students to Tuskegee. This gave rise to the establishment of national universities, so US foreign aid was no longer directed to the provision of scholarships to HBCUs like Tuskegee but went instead to assist these former colonies in building tertiary level institutions in these newly independent states.

Veterinary Medicine

There was a time when Tuskegee had the only Black veterinary school in the world.In the Caribbean for example virtually every vet was a Tuskegee graduate.Today ,the situation has changed as the University of the West Indies(UWI) has its own vet school and so does Cuba.Most of the architects in The Bahamas were Tuskegee trained,today there is a University of The Bahamas.

Is Tuskegee Relevant?

For those of us in the African Diaspora, Tuskegee is not relevant as it used to be during my Uncle’s time and my time.In my time I was exempt from the Grad Record Exam when I applied to the University of Wisconsin.When I applied for the  postgraduate course in Tropical Agriculture at UWI,I was admitted and was the only Caribbean national in a course designed  for Englishmen from Oxford, Cambridge,Wye, Reading  being trained, in 1965, to work in colonial Africa as Agricultural Experts.I was readily accepted because Tuskegee had a global reputation in Agriculture stemming from Dr. Carver’s  revolutionary research in crop and food sciences.

Togo Expedition

At the turn of the 20th century, Dr Washington was attending a conference in Cambridge, Massacutteus and was notified that the Agricultural Attache at the German Embassy in Washington,D.C. was trying to contact him.This was about two decades after Dr. Washington founded Tuskegee.The request puzzle President Washinton as he or Tuskegee had no relationship with Germany.It turned out that  the Germans had identified their West African colony ,Togo, as the locale for  a cotton project.Slavery had ended and the US was Germany’s major supplier of cotton for their mills as they anticipated that there would be shortage because free labour had ended with Emancipation.The Germans  wanted  Tuskegee to mount an expedition to provide technical expertise in the  commercial production of cotton in their African colony.The Tuskegee team was successful and launched cotton as commercial raw material for large-scale manufacturing to support a burgeoning Indusrial Revolution which was taking place in Europe.

Cotton as a Small Farmer Cash Crop 

 The Tuskegee Expedition  introduced  cotton as a cash crop for small farmers not only in Togo but throughout West Africa.Research centres with pilot farms were set up as  part of Dr. Washington and Tuskegee’s legacy in West African Agriculture.They are functioning today in a francophone Togo.

  Another phenomenal aspect of the Expedition  was the transformation which  was  undertaken by the descendants of Africans who were stolen from Africa as a result of the Trans -Atlantic Slave Trade.Their sons were now   returning to Africa as agricultural scientists.

A New Global Order

Tuskegee was able to respond to a need in Africa ,some 120 years ago with the Togo Expedition. Where is the Tuskegee response today in Africa and the Caribbean who  are struggling with issues like food and nutrition security,climate change,economic underdevelopment,lagging in technological advancement and so much?Tuskegee should initiate collaborative technical  programmes with national universities in those countries which were once  the source of foreign students.This is one type of  mechanism  which can be utilized to become relevant and regain the status Tuskegee once had as an academic  beacon that predated the HBCU designation.

From my perspective,Tuskegee’s status as one of the preeminent HBCU has been eclipsed by Howard, Spellmam and Morehouse Universities respectively  and, in some cases, 1890 Land Grant Universities, like Florida A and M University, who have recently launched a programme, Investing for  Agricultural Resiliency,Equity and Global Impact.This is a cutting -edge pursuit and , with the necessary adaptation or tweeking,  is applicable in the Caribbean and Africa. 

Eneas’ and Tuskegee

I started this paper with the story of the manner in which we Eneas’ got to Tuskegee. I will end it with a quotation from the book, Tuskegee Ra! Ra! Which was written by my Uncle in 1986, some 55 years after his initial entrance to Tuskegee  through the Lincoln Gates. His Tuskegee experience impacted his life and changed the socio-economic trajectory of the generation of Eneas’ who followed him in attaining a tertiary level education. Uncle Cle ,as I affectionately called him,said the following in is book:

“I credit most of what I have become to what I learned at Tuskegee,under circumstances that I now regard as the luckiest happenings of my life...I learned (what) was possible for me to become ...At Tuskegee, I discovered that it was possible for me to become whatever I had the desire to become, because all around me were beacons shining on examples of what I could become.”

Tuskegee cannot grow and gain relevance based on Dr Washington’s Industrial Education Model or the legacy of  Dr. Carver’s inventions or a Vet School which was the only one of its kind in a bye-gone era.Tuskegee must reinvent itself to meet the challenges of the 21st century.