Booker T. Washington: “I do not believe that anything, any element of your lives, is put into them without a purpose.”

Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

Even the most ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the Northern armies conquered.

He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.

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.