Booker T. Washington: “What position in State, in letters, or in commerce and in business the offspring of that man is to occupy must be left…”

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.

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.

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

He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.