Booker T. Washington: “Until that question was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was devoted to play.”

When freedom came, the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property.

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.

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

When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which…