Booker T. Washington: “I was equally determined to be true to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in what I had to…”

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.

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

Until that question was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was devoted to play.

I never saw a man who so completely lost sight of himself.