Booker T. Washington: “It put us to thinking and planning; it brought us in to contact with things that are out of the ordinary; and there is…”

The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.

I never saw a man who so completely lost sight of himself.

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

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