Booker T. Washington

There was a further feeling that a knowledge, however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would make one a very superior human being, something bordering almost on the supernatural.

The idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live without manual labour.

The ambition to secure an education was most praiseworthy and encouraging.

It could not have been expected that a people who had spent generations in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism, could at first form any proper conception of what an education meant.

It seemed to me as I watched this struggle between members of the two races, that there was no hope for our people in this country.

The “Ku Klux” were bands of men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of preventing the members of the race from exercising any influence in politics.

I was supremely happy in the opportunity of being able to assist somebody else.

Without regard to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who wanted to learn anything that I could teach him.

In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more far-reaching.

I felt from the first that mere book education was not all that the young people of that town needed.

I now felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town to a higher life.

At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.