The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.
In his autobiography, he describes the deep personal satisfaction he derived from passing a practical cleaning test to enter Hampton Institute.
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More from Booker T. Washington
The great human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.
This problem Harvard University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by bringing the masses up.
How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cotton-fields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms?
What is equally important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control which is causing better relations to exist between the races, and is causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the value of educating the…