Booker T. Washington: “In fact, in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith in me than I had…”

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

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.

In this connection I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely…

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