Booker T. Washington: “This is the point I want to make with you; that one of the reasons you are here is that you may learn to overcome…”

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

Even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when putting on one of these garments.

I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.