Booker T. Washington: “You cannot set proper examples unless you, yourself, are constantly employed.”

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

Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something, anyway.

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.

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.