Booker T. Washington: “Take yourself up, pick yourself to pieces, see wherein you are weak and need strengthening.”

I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race.

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

Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.

I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.