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.
Reflecting on his childhood during slavery, Washington describes his early, powerful longing for formal education.
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He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.
I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race.
I think I never saw a community of people so happy over anything as were the coloured people over the prospect of this new building.
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…