Booker T. Washington: “Know all there is to be known about the position you occupy, but ever feel that there is more for you to learn.”

In this connection I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely…

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.

But taking place at the time it did, and for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving.

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.