Deep down in my heart the whole thing seemed more like a dream than like reality, and for a long time it was difficult for me to make myself believe that I was actually going to Europe.
Booker T. Washington
The Public Record
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
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He felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.
I had been at work steadily for eighteen years in connection with Tuskegee, and I had never thought of anything else but ending my life in that way.
I have sometimes thought that people who have this rare privilege do not appreciate it as they should.
Notwithstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with…
You ought to realize that your actions will not affect yourselves alone.
I want you to go out into the world, not to have an easy time, but to make sacrifices, and to help somebody else.
I like my work so much that I want to work at my trade all day.
My experience teaches me that, if one learns to follow this plan, he gets a freshness of body and vigour of mind out of work that goes a long way toward keeping him strong and healthy.
In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true, and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency.
That kind of thing, I think, is empty and hollow, and an audience soon finds it out.
I find that the most effective medicine for such individuals is administered at first in the form of a story, although I never tell an anecdote simply for the sake of telling one.