Booker T. Washington: “This country demands that every race shall measure itself by the American standard.”

Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.

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.

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…