 should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? Robert Browning said it. He wasn't thinking of Booker T. Washington, but there's no better line ever said or spoken to sum up the character, the iron strength, the awesome drive and determination and ambition, the place in American history, and the meaning today of Booker T. Washington in our lives. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. We had a pallet on the dirt floor, or to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor. During the period that I spent in slavery, I was not large enough to be of much service. Still, I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mills to which I used to take the corn once a week to be ground. Textures, cloth, wood, grain, dirt, the first things a child's hands know. These things can set up a reaction within the child, implant a longing for something better, always better. So they are the shaping elements going deep into the child's mind and spirit. If you sleep on rags and handle wood, grain, and dirt, this can make the finer textures of the world, the textures of civilization, large and aching needs to your brain and heart. Knowing you are a slave can fill you with thirst for the materials of freedom. First pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch thick, were made of wood. That part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of course, was the cheapest and roughest part. It is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut burrs or 100 small pin points in contact with his flesh. Yes, being a slave can fill you with thirst for the materials of freedom. From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined when I was quite a small child that if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. But the materials of freedom don't always come with freedom. Education was no gift for Booker T. Washington. It was a victory. Some man who seemed to be a stranger made a little speech and then read a rather long paper, the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. The hands reached, and the brain reached with them for an answer. But he got no answers, only more questions. In a few hours, the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. The question of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education. Where, when, how? While his hands worked with salt and a salt furnace in Maldon, West Virginia, his brain reached along with his hands. The boss of the Packers would come around and put the number 18 on each of our barrels. And I soon learned to recognize that figure wherever I saw it. And after a while, I got to the point where I could make that figure. Education, when, how? In an old Webster's blueback spelling book, his mother got it for him, somehow, somewhere. He tried all the ways he could think of to learn the alphabet without a teacher. He could find no one to teach him. He was deeply impressed by a man who could read a newspaper. The mind reached, the hands reached. And he found someone to teach him. He found someone because he had to. He found a teacher who taught him by night. And then he found a school and went to it by day. With the understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o'clock and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work. He had to work till nine. And the school opened at night. So Booker T. Washington moved the hands of the salt furnace clock forward. Since it is a fact I might as well stated, I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time. He worked against time. He worked in the earth with the earth's stubborn textures. He worked, too, against his times and their own slow yielding reluctance. He worked in the coal mines, in the dark and the damp. The mind always blazing, both mind and muscle fighting toward the liberation of the spirit, toward real freedom of spirit and body. And from Mrs. Ruffner, wife of the salt furnace and coal mine owner, he learned as he worked for her the satisfaction of craftsmanship that can come from doing a job well. She helped him get books for the tiny library he now kept in a wood shed. She let him go to school in the afternoon. From her, he learned a great new lesson. Even to this day I never see a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it or a pailing off a fence that I do not want to put it on an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint it or whitewash it or a button off one's clothes or a grease spot on them or on a floor that I do not want to call attention to it. From the town of Malden to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia was about 500 miles. Part of the way through the coal mountains was by stagecoach. Part of the way through the bitter coal lesson of discrimination lay in being turned down flat as a guest by the desk clerk in a shoddy white hotel. Part of the way through the chilly lonesomeness of not enough money, no friends lay in spending the night under a bored sidewalk enrichment back again to the naked ground. And part of the way to Hampton lay in helping unload a cargo of pig iron. And then at the school in Hampton came the entrance examination. It consisted of sweeping a recitation room. I swept the recitation room three times. Then I got a dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. South Reliance. The dignity of work. The liberation of the inner self which is education. These Booker T. Washington believed in. And these he practiced laying the start of a giant American flame even while he worked his way through Hampton as a janitor laying the base for a flame of the intellect which would begin to burn away prejudice from the mind of America. I had to rise by four o'clock in the morning in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to prepare my lessons. And somehow his fires are still burning. He remembered in these words the time when he worked alongside Miss Mackie the head teacher of Hampton. She worked by my side cleaning windows, dusting rooms. It was hard for me to understand how a woman of her education and social standing could take such a delight in performing such service. But he did understand. He understood fully and took delight himself in service to his fellow man relating ideas to facts of nature. I also learned a valuable lesson at Hampton by coming into contact with the best breeds of livestock and fowls. His philosophy grew at Hampton. Grew like grain stored to bursting in a grain den. Part of it was firmed by another white friend General Samuel Armstrong of whom Booker T. Washington said one might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers and industries and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong and that alone would have been a liberal education. These things he took with him from Hampton ideas both abstract and as solid as a piece of chalk in the fingers. Ideas he put into action when he went back to Maldon as a teacher. He taught his pupils at Maldon to keep their bodies clean from their minds like doors so that the students who went from his classes at Maldon to Hampton were automatically advanced two classes. During this time too he joined a political group and traveled through West Virginia making speeches. He began to be known as a dynamic eloquent speaker. During the same time he thought seriously about becoming a lawyer and he studied for the law but he decided the best use he could make of his life was to dedicate it to education. Now he had the materials of freedom. Now the child's vision had come alive. Now he could begin to share what he had with his people. He went to study in Washington at Washington Seminary. Of the time he studied there he said, I derived a great deal of benefit from the studies which I pursued and I came into contact with some strong men and women. Yes he was a man who responded to strength who brought it out in others. Of the jobless Negroes the Negro dandies he saw in the city of Washington he said, I wish that by some power of magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of mother nature. The solid and never deceptive foundation of nature. Truly he believed in nature but not nature alone. Nature controlled by man dominated by the mind harvested by the mind and the will in harmony. He was a giant. Yes. He was an optimist. Yes. Without these qualities he could not have reached his vision. Without them he could not have achieved his enormous value to his country and to his people and now like leaves ripening like grass bursting with purpose in a fresh field like all the materials he had known and worked with salt, coal, corn, wood, the earth itself he had reached the time of his great use to the world the time of planting for harvest the time of founding and originating Tuskegee Institute we wanted to give our students such a practical knowledge of some one industry together with the spirit of industry, thrift and economy that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. For Booker T. Washington knew what the needs of his people were he wanted to give them real training in scientific agriculture and in modern craftsmanship he wanted to free them in earnest as he had been free a cabin, an old kitchen, a stable and a henhouse these were all he had to work with at the start at the time slavery had been abolished for just 16 years but from the start he offered more than manual work again he opened up minds like doors again he let in the fresh winds of new thought again he turned students eyes toward bright horizons he taught brick making and wagon repairing and well cleaning but he also taught the mind working with the hand electricians, surveyors, steam engineers, contractors school teachers, home economists and Tuskegee grew grew through gifts through the eloquence and fame of its founder grew as his influence spread throughout America the influence, the strengths of such a man are hard to assess they need a special hourglass to mark their greatness they are still alive in our time very much alive very deeply alive in our world from the child open to the bitter winds of slavery asleep under rags on the cabin floor of dirt to the man sitting with Theodore Roosevelt at dinner chatting with Queen Victoria the international man all this seems an immense step and it is yet it was inherent in him in his vision and the vision was universal for every man, woman and child at his race listen to the voice again I would not confine the race to industrial life not even to agriculture for example but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation must be laid at the very best service which anyone can render to what is called a higher education is to teach the present generation to provide a material or industrial foundation on such a foundation as this will grow habits of thrift the love of work economy ownership of property bank accounts practical education professional education moral and religious strength the hand and the brain must work together to make the vision true this is what this powerful orator this towering educator told us to remember and in his Atlanta speech he told us something else told it to every American every lover of humanity should count it a privilege to help in the solution of a great problem for which our whole country is responsible Booker T. Washington told us that with his life and he is telling it to us now in this living moment his reach did indeed exceed his grasp but that, as Robert Browning has said is what a heaven is for