Booker T. Washington: “What are you going to do as your part towards reaching these people, towards carrying to them the light which they need…”

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…

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.

The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and mistresses who for some…