Booker T. Washington: “You should be constantly on the lookout for chances to make yourselves more valuable to your present employer, and more…”

I do not know how many have noticed it, but I think that it will be found to be true that there are few instances, either in slavery or freedom, in which a member of my race has been known to betray a specific trust.

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

In order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives.

I can scarcely imagine any torture, except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time.