Booker T. Washington: “In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him.”

Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something, anyway.

Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did.

When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which…

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.