Booker T. Washington: “I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising…”

I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation.

Even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when putting on one of these garments.

Even the most ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the Northern armies conquered.

The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.