 Preface an introduction of Up From Slavery. This is a LibreWalks recording. All LibreWalks recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreWalks.org. Recording by Andy Yu. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Preface an introduction. This volume is dedicated to my wife, Margaret James Washington, and to my brother, John H. Washington, whose patience, fidelity, and hard work have gone far to make the work at Tuskegee successful. Preface, this volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles dealing with incidents in my life which were published consecutively in the outlook. While they were appearing in that magazine, I was constantly surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of the country, asking that the articles be permanent they preserved in book form. I am most grateful to the outlook for permission to gratify these requests. I have tried to tell a simple straightforward story with no attempt at embellishment. My regret is that what I have attempted to do has been done so imperfectly. The greater part of my time and strength is required for the executive work connected with the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and in securing the money necessary for the support of the institution. Much of what I have said has been written on board trains or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been waiting for trains or during the moments that I could spare from my work while at Tuskegee. Without the painstaking and generous assistance of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I could not have succeeded in any satisfactory degree. Introduction The details of Mr. Washington's early life as frankly sat down in upfront slavery do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had the training that a colored youth received at Hampton which indeed the autobiography does explain but the reader does not get his intellectual pedigree for Mr. Washington himself perhaps does not as clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a training during the most impressionable period of his life that was very extraordinary. Such a training as few men of his generation have had. To see his full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian islands half a century or more ago. There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of missionary parents earned enough money to pay his expenses at an American college equipped with a small sum and the earnestness that the undertaking implied he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth in that day as it has in this but the greatest was the strong personality of his famous president. Every student does not profit by a great teacher but perhaps no young man ever came under the influence of Dr. Hopkins whose whole nature was so right for profit by such an experience as young Armstrong. He lived in the family of President Hopkins and thus had a training that was wholly out of the common and this training had much to do with the development of his own strong character whose originality and force we are only beginning to appreciate. For this interesting view of Mr. Washington's education I am indebted to Robert C. Oston, Esquire, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Hampton Institute and the intimate friend of General Armstrong during the whole period of his educational work. In turn Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute took up his work as a trainer of youth. He had very raw material and doubtless most of his pupils failed to get the greatest lessons from him but as he had been a particularly receptive pupil of Dr. Hopkins so Booker Washington became a peculiarly receptive pupil of his. To the formation of Mr. Washington's character then went the missionary seal of New England influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern education and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong himself. These inferences are easily recognizable in Mr. Washington today by men who knew Dr. Hopkins and General Armstrong. I got the cue to Mr. Washington's character from a very simple incident many years ago. I had never seen him and knew little about him except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had occasion to write to him and I addressed him as the Reverend Booker T. Washington. In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as a clergyman but when I had occasion to write to him again and persistent in making him a preacher his second letter brought a post script. I have no claim to Reverend. I knew most of the colored men who had at the time had become prominent as leaders of their race but I had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher and I had not heard of the head of an important colored school who was not a preacher. A new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one. I wrote him an apology for mistaking him for a preacher. The first time that I went to Tuskegee I was asked to make an address to the school on Sunday evening. I sat upon the platform of the large chapel and looked forth on a thousand colored faces and the choir of a hundred or more behind me sang a familiar religious melody and the whole company joined in the chorus unsung. I was the only white man under the roof and the scene and the songs made an impression on me that I shall never forget. Mr. Washington arose and asked them to sing one after another all the old melodies that I had heard all my life but I had never before heard them sung by a thousand voices nor by the voices of educated Negroes. I had associated them with the Negro of the past not with the Negro who was struggling upward. They brought to my mind the plantation, the cabin, the slave not the freedom in quest of education but on the plantation and in the cabin they had never been sung as these thousand students sang them. I saw again all the old plantations that I had ever seen. The whole history of the Negro went through my mind and the inexpressible pathos of his life found expression in these songs as I had never before felt it. In the future, these were the ambitious use of the race at work with an earnestness that put to shame the conventional student life of most educational institutions. Another song rolled up along the raptors and as soon as silence came I found myself in front of this extraordinary mass of faces thinking not of them but of that long and unhappy chapter in our country's history which followed the one great structural mistake of the fathers of the republic. Thinking of the one continuous great problem that generations of statesmen had wrangled over and a million men fought about and that had so drafted the mass of English men in the southern states as to hold them back a hundred years behind their fellows in every other part of the world in England, in Australia and in the northern and western states. I was thinking of this dark shadow that had oppressed every large minded statesman from Jefferson to Lincoln. These thousands young men and women without me were victims of it. I too was an innocent victim of it. The whole republic was a victim of that fundamental era of importing Africa into America. I held firmly to the first article of my faith that the republic must stand fast by the principle of a fair ballot but I recalled the wretched mass that reconstruction had made of it. I recalled the low level of public life in all the black states. Every effort of philanthropy seemed to have miscarried. Every effort at connecting abuses seemed of doubtful value and the race friction seemed to become severer. Here was the century old problem in all its pathos seated, singing before me. Who were there more to be pitied? These innocent victims of an ancient wrong or I and men like me who had inherited the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories and was willing to meet the faces, face to face and to do whatever in God's name a man might do to us saving the next generation from such a burden. But I felt the weight of 20 well-nigh hopeless years of thought and reading and observation for the old difficulties remained and new ones had sprung up. Then I saw clearly that the way out of a century of bundles had been made by this man who stood beside me and was introducing me to his audience. Before me was the material he had used. All about me was the indisputable evidence that he had found the natural line of development. He had shown the way time and patience and encouragement and work would do the rest. It was then more clearly than ever before that I understood the patriotic significance of Mr. Washington's work. It is this conception of him that I have ever since carried with me. It is on this that his claim to our gratitude rests. To teach the Negro to read whether English or Greek or Hebrew, bit us no pass lips. To make the Negro work that is what his master did in one way and hunger has done in another, yet both these left southern life were founded. But to teach the Negro to do skillful work as man of all the races that have risen, have worked responsible work which is education and character. And most of all when Negroes so teach Negroes to do this that they will teach others with a missionary zeal that puts all ordinary philanthropic efforts to shame. This is to change the whole economic basis of life and the whole character of a people. The plan itself is not a new one. It was worked out at Hampton Institute, but it was done at Hampton by white men. The plan had in fact been many times theoretically laid down by thoughtful students of southern life. Handicrafts were taught in the days of slavery on most well-managed plantations. But Tuskegee is, Naptanes, a brand new chapter in the history of the Negro and in the history of the naughtiest problem we have ever faced. It not only makes a carpenter of a man, it makes a man of a carpenter. In one sense, therefore, it is of greater value than any other institution for the training of men and women that we have from Cambridge to Palo Alto. It is almost the only one of which it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a large area of our national life. To work out the plan on paper or at a distance, that is one thing. For a white man to work it out, that too is an easy thing. For a colored man to work it out in the south where in his constructive period he was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the whites and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained race relations. That is so very difficult and more difficult a thing that the man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to him. It was not and it's not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys trace and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done since the beginning of civilization but this task had to be done with the role of raw material done with the civilization of the dominant race. And so as not to run across race lines and social lines that are the strongest forces in the community. It had to be done for the benefit of the whole community. It had to be done, however, without local help in the face of direct poverty done by begging and done in spite of the ignorance of one race and the prejudice of the other. No man living had a harder task and a task that called for more wisdom to do it right. The true measure of Mr. Washington's success is then not his teaching the pupils of Tuskegee nor even gaining the support of philanthropic persons at a distance, but this that every southern white man of character and of wisdom has been one to cordial recognition of the value of the work. Even men who held and still hold to the conviction that a mere book education for the southern blacks under present conditions is a positive evil. This is a demonstration of the efficiency of the Hampton Tuskegee idea that stands like the demonstration of the value of democratic institutions themselves. A demonstration made so clear in spite of the greatest odds that it is no longer open to argument. Consider the change that has come in 20 years in the discussion of the Negro problem. Two of three decades ago, social philosophers, statisticians and well-meaning philanthropists were still talking and writing about the deportations of the Negroes or about their settlement within some restricted area or about the settling in all parts of the Union or about the decline through the neglect of the children or about the rapid multiplication till they should expel the whites from the south of every sort of nonsense under heaven. All this has given place to the simple plan of an indefinite extension among the neglected classes of both races on the Hampton Tuskegee system of training. The problem, in one sense, has disappeared. The future will have for the self swift of snow development of its masses and of its soil in population to the swift of slow developments of this kind of training. This change of view is a true measure of Mr. Washington's work. The literature of the Negro in America is colossal from political oratory through abolitionism to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Cotton's King, a vast mass of books which many men have read to the waste of good years and I among them. But the only books that I have read a second time or ever care again to read in the whole list, most of them by tiresome and unbalanced reformers are Uncle Remus and Up from Slavery. For these are the great literature of the subject. One has all the best of the past, the other foreshadows a better future and the men who wrote them are the only men who have written of the subject with that perfect frankness and perfect knowledge and perfect post whose other name is Genius. Mr. Washington has won a worldwide fame at an early age. His story of his own life already has the distinction of translation into more languages, I think, than any other American book and I suppose that he has as large a personal acquaintance among men of inference as any private citizen now living. His only teaching at Tuskegee is unique. He lectures to his advanced students on the art of right living, not out of textbooks but straight out of life. Then he sends them into the country to visit Negro families. Such a student will come back with a minute report of the way in which the family that he has seen lives, what the earnings are, what they do well and what they do ill, and he will explain how they might live better. He constructs a definite plan for the betterment of that particular family out of the resources that they have. Such a student, if he be bright, will profit more by an experience like this than he could profit by all the books on sociology and economics that ever were written. I talked with a boy at Tuskegee who had made such a study as this and I could not keep from contrasting his knowledge and enthusiasm with what I heard in the classroom at a Negro university in one of the southern states, which is conducted on the idea that a college course will save the soul. Here the class was reciting a lesson from an abstruse textbook of economics, reciting it by Rott with so obvious failure to assimilate it that the ways of labor was pitiful. I asked Mr. Washington years ago what he regarded as the most important result of his work and he replied, I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee's work on the Negro or the effect of the attitude of the white man to the Negro. The race divergence under the systems of miseducation was fast getting wider. Under the inference of the Hampton Tuskegee idea, the races are coming into a closer sympathy and into an honorable and helpful relation. As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a responsible part of the southern life and the whites so recognize him and this must be from the nature of things. There is nothing artificial about it. It is development in a perfectly natural way and the southern whites not only so recognize it but they are imitating it in the teaching of the neglected masses of their own race. It has thus come about that the school was taking a more direct and helpful hold on life in the South than anywhere else in the country. Education is not a thing apart from life, not a system, nor a philosophy. It is a direct teaching how to live and how to work. To say that Mr. Washington has won the gratitude of all throughout southern white men is to say that he has worked with the highest practical wisdom at a large constructive task for no plan for the upbuilding of the freedom could succeed that ran counter to the southern opinion. To win the support of the southern opinion and to shape it was a necessary part of the task and this he has so well succeeded that the South has a sincere and high regard for him. He once said to me that he recalled the day and remembered it thankfully when he grew large enough to regard a southern white man as he regard a northern one. It is well while common country that the day is come when he and his work are regarded as highly in the South as in the other part of the Union. I think that no man of our generation has a more noteworthy achievement to his credit than this and it is an achievement of moral earnestness of the strong character of a man who has done a great rational service. Introduction by Walter H. Page. And of Preface and Introduction. Recording by Andy Yu, Mississauga, Canada. Chapter 1 of Up from Slavery. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Andy Yu. Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Chapter 1, A Slave Among Slaves. I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I'm not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate, I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads, one of us called Hales Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not know the month or the date. The earliest impression I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their captains. My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, late and discouraging surroundings. They were so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel for they were not, as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin about 14 by 16 feet square. In this cabin, I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War when we were all declared free. Of my ancestry, I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters and even later I heard whispered conversations among the colored people of the tortures which the slaves, including no doubt my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ships, which being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery, not very much attention was given to family history and family records. That is, black family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to the slave family soon attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new horse or cow. Of my father, I know even less than of my mother. I do not even know his name. I have heard reports to the fact that he was a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations. Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my bearing. But I do not find a special fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the nation unhappily had and grafted upon it at that time. The cabin was not only our living place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows. It had only opening in the side which led in the light and also the cold chilly air of winter. There was a door to the cabin that is something that was called a door, but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung and the large cracks in it to say nothing of the fact that it was too small made the room of very uncomfortable one. In addition to this opening there was in the lower right hand corner of the room the cat hole, a contrivance which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the Antebellum period. The cat hole was a square opening about 7 by 8 inches provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and out of the house at will during the night. In the case of our particular cabin I could never understand the necessity for this convenience since there were at least a half dozen other places in the cabin that would have accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the center of the earthen floor there was a large deep opening covered with boards which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter. An impression of this potato hole is very distinctly engraved upon my memory because I recall that during the process of putting the potatoes in or taking them out I would often come into possession of one or two which I roasted and thoroughly enjoyed. There was no cooking stove on our plantation and all the cooking for the whites and slaves my mother had to do over an open fireplace mostly in pots and skillets while the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold in the winter the heat from the open fireplace in summer was equally trying. The early years of my life which were spent in the little cabin were not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. My mother of course had little time in which to give attention to the training of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care in the early morning before her work began and at night after the day's work was done. One of my earliest recollections is that of my mother cooking a chicken late at night and giving her children for the purpose of feeding them how aware she got it I do not know I presume however it was procured from our owner's farm some people may call this theft if such a thing were to happen now I should condemn it as theft myself but taking place at the time it did and for the reason that it did no one could ever make the believe that my mother was guilty of theft she was simply a victim of the system of slavery I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation Three children, John, my old brother Amanda, my sister and myself had a pallet on the third floor or to be more correct we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the third floor I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and pastimes that I engaged in during my youth until that question was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was devoted to play 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 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 man in the fields or going to the mill to which I used to take the corn once a week to be ground the mill was about three miles from the plantation this work I always dreaded the heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back of the horse and the corn divided about evenly on each side but in some way almost without exception on these trips the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and would fall off the horse and often I would fall with it as I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse I would have to wait sometimes for many hours till a chance pass by came along who would help me out of my trouble the hours while waiting for someone were usually spent in crying the time consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill and by the time I got my corn ground and reached home it would be far into the night the road was a lonely one and often left through dense forests I was always frightened the woods were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army and I had been told that the first thing I deserted to a Negro boy when he found him alone was to cut off his ears besides when I was late in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a frogging I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books the picture of several dozen boys and girls in the school room when study made a deep impression upon me and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise so far as I can now recall the first knowledge that I got or the fact that we were slaves and that freedom of the slaves was being discussed was early one morning before day when I was awakened my mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln and his armies might be successful and that one day she and her children might be free and 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 accurately and completely informed about the great national question that were agitating the country from a time that garrison lovejoy and others began to agitate for freedom the slaves throughout the South kept in close touch with the progress of the movement though I was a mere child during the preparation for the civil war and during the war itself I was called the many late at night whispered discussions that I heard my mother and the other slaves on the plantation in Daugin these discussions showed that they understood the situation and that they kept themselves informed of events by what was term the grapevine telegraph during the campaign when Lincoln was first a candidate for the presidency the slaves on our far off plantation miles from any railroad or large city or daily newspapers knew what the issues involved were when war was begun between the North and the South every slave on our plantation felt and knew that though other issues were discussed the primal one was that of slavery 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 every success of the federal armies and every defeat of the confederate forces was watched with the keenness and most intense interest often the slaves got knowledge of the results of the great battles the white people received it this news was usually gotten from the colored man who was sent to the post office for the mail in our case the post office was about three miles from the plantation and the mail came once or twice a week the man who was sent to the office would linger about the place long enough to get the drift of the conversation from the group of white people who naturally congregated there after receiving their mail to discuss the latest news the mail carrier on his way back to our master's house would as naturally retail the news that he had secured among the slaves and in this way they often heard of important events before the white people at the big house as the master's house was called I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together and God's blessing was asked and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner on the plantation in Virginia and even later meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs it was a piece of bread here there it was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another sometimes a portion of a family would eat out of the skillet or pot while someone else would eat from a tin plate held on the knees and often using nothing but the hands of which to hold the food when I had grown to sufficient size I was required to go to the big house a few times to fan the flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a pulley naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned upon the subject of freedom and the war and I absorbed a good deal of it I remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger cake in the yard at that time those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things that I had ever seen and I then and there resolved that if I ever got free the height of my ambition would be reached if I could get to the point where I could secure and eat ginger cakes in a way that I saw those ladies doing along the white people in many cases often found it difficult to secure food for themselves I think the slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites because the usual diet for slaves was cornbread and pork and these could be raised on the plantation but coffee, tea, sugar and other articles which the whites had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the plantation and the conditions brought about by the war frequently made impossible to secure these things the whites were often in great states parched corn was used for coffee and a kind of black molasses was used instead of sugar many times nothing was used to sweeten the so-called tea and coffee the first pair of shoes that I recalled wearing they are rough leather on the top but the bottoms which were about an inch thick were of wood when I walked they made a fearful noise and besides this they were very inconvenient since there was no yielding to the natural pressure of the foot in wearing them one presented an exceedingly awkward appearance the most trying ordeal that I was forced to endure as a slave boy however was the wearing of a flax shirt in the portion of Virginia where I live it was common to use flax as part of the clothing for the slaves that part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely from the refills which of course was the cheapest and roughest part I can scarcely imagine any torture except perhaps pulling of a tooth that is equal to that caused by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time it is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut burns or a hundred small pin points in contact with his flesh even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when putting on one of these garments the fact that my fresh was soft and tender added to the pain but I had no choice I had to wear the flax shirt or none and had it been left to me to choose I should have chosen to wear no covering in connection with the flax shirt my brother John who is several years older than I am performed one of the most generous acts that I ever heard of one slave relative doing for another on several occasions when I was being forced to wear new flax shirt he generously agreed to put it on in my state and wear it for several days till it was broken in until I had grown to be quite a youth this single garment was all that I wore one we get the idea from what I have said that there was bitter feeling towards the white people or in the part of my race because of the fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which would result in keeping the negro in slavery if the south was successful in the case of the slaves on our place it was not true and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the south where the negro was treated with anything like decency during the civil war one of my young masters was killed and two were severely wounded I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves when they heard of the death of Mars Billy it was no sham sorrow but real some of the slaves had nursed Mars Billy others had played with him when he was a child Mars Billy had begged for the in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them the sorrow in the slave quarters was only second to that in the big house when the two young masters were brought home wounded the sympathy of the slaves was shown in many ways they were just as anxious to assist in the nursing as the family relatives of the wounded some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of setting up at night to nurse the wounded masters this tenderness and sympathy on the part of those held in bondage was a result of their kindly and generous nature in order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantation when the white males went to war the slave who was selected to sleep in the big house during the absence of the males was considered to have the place of honor anyone attempting to harm young mistress or old mistress during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to do so I do not know how many have noticed it but I think that it will be found to be true that there are few instances either in slavery or freedom in which a member of my race has been known to betray a specific trust as a rule not only did the members of my race entertain no feeling of bitterness against the whites before and during the war but there are many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the war I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for years been supplied with money by the former slaves to give them from suffering I have known of still other cases in which the former slaves have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former owners I know of a case on a large plantation in the south in which a young white man the son of the former owner of the estate has become so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a pitiable creature and yet notwithstanding the poverty of the colored people themselves on this plantation they have for years supplied this young white man with the necessities of life and sends him a little coffee or sugar another a little meat and so on nothing that the colored people possess is too good for the son of the old master Tom who will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place who knew directly or indirectly of old master Tom I have said that there are a number of my race between our specific trust one of the best illustrations of this which I know of is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia home I met not long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio I found that this man had made a contact with his master who two or three years previous to the emancipation proclamation to the fact the slave was to be permitted to buy himself by paying so much per year for his body and while he was paying for himself he was to be permitted to labor where and for home he pleased finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio he went there when freedom came he was still in debt to his master some 300 dollars notwithstanding that the emancipation proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia and placed the last dollar with interest in his hands in talking to me about this the man told me that he knew that he did not have to pay the debt but that he had given his word to his master and his word he had never broken he felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise from some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom this is not true I have never seen one who did not want to be free or one who would return to slavery I pity from the bottom or body of people that is so unfortunately as to get entangled in a net of slavery I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race no one section of that country was wholly responsible for his introduction and besides it was recognized and protected for years by the general government having once got his tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the republic it was no easy matter for the country to believe itself of the institution then when we read ourselves of prejudice or racial feeling and look facts in the face we must acknowledge that notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery the 10 million negroes inhabiting this country who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery are in a stronger and more hopeful condition materially intellectually morally and religiously then is the then is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the group this is so to such an extent that negroes in this country who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery are constantly returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in the fatherland this I say not to justify slavery on the other hand I condemn it as an institution as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons and not from a missionary motive but call attention to a fact and to show how providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose when persons ask me in these days how in the midst of what sometimes seemed hopelessly discouraging traditions I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country I remind them of the wilderness through which and our which a good providence had already led us ever since I have been old enough to think for myself I have entertained the idea that not understanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did the hurtful inferences of the institution were not by any means confined to the Negro this was fully illustrated by the life upon our own plantation the whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labor as a rule to be looked upon as a batch of degradation of inferiority hence labor was something that both races slave plantations sought to escape the slave system on our place in a large measure took the spirit of self reliance and self help out of the white people my old master had many boys and girls but not one so far as I know ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industries the girls were not to cook so or to take care of the house all of this was left to the slaves the slaves of course had little personal interest in the life of the plantation and their ignorance prevented them from learning how to do things in the most improved and thorough manner as a result of the system fences were out of repair gates were hanging half off the doors creaked window paints were out plastering had fallen but was not replaced weeds glue in the yard as a rule there was food for whites and blacks but inside house and on the dining room table there was wanting that delicacy and refinement of both of touch and finish which can make a home the most convenient comfortable and attractive place in the world with all there was a waste of food and outer materials which was sad when freedom came the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master except in the matter of book learning and ownership of property the slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry they unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labor was not the proper thing for them on the other hand the slaves in many cases had mastered some handicraft and none were ashamed and few unwilling to labor finally the wall closed and the day of freedom came it was a momentous and eventful day to all upon our plantation we had been expecting it freedom was there and had been for months deserting soldiers returning to their homes were to be seen every day others who had been discharged or whose regiments had been paroled were constantly passing near our place the great wine telegraph was kept busy night and day the news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried from one plantation to another in the fear of Yankee invasions the silverware and other valuables were taken from the big house buried in the woods and guarded by trusted slaves will be to anyone who would have attempted to disturb the buried treasure the slaves would gift the Yankee soldiers food, drink, clothing anything but that which had been specifically entrusted to their care and honour as the great day drew nearer there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual it was bolder had more ring and lasted later internight most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom true they had sung those same verses before but they had been careful to explain that the freedom in these songs refer to the next world and had no connection with life in this world now they gradually threw off the mask and were not afraid to let it be known that the freedom in their songs mean freedom of the body in this world the night before the eventful day word was sent to the slave quarters to the fact that something unusual was going to take place at the big house the next morning there was little if any sleep that night all as excitement and expectancy early the next morning word was sent to all the slaves old and young to gather at the house in company with my mother brother and my sister and a large number of other slaves I went to master's house all of our master's family were either standing or seated on the veranda of the house where they could see what was to take place and hear what was said there was a feeling of deep interest of all perhaps sadness on the faces but not bitterness as I now recall the impression they made upon me they did not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property but rather because of parting those home they had reared and who were in many ways very close to them the most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be a stranger in practice a united states officer I presume 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 she explained to us what it all meant that this was the day for which she had been so long playing but fearing that she would never live to see thanksgiving and wild scenes of ecstasy but there was no feeling of bitterness in fact there was pity among the slaves for our former owners the wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated colored people lasted but for a brief period for I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings the great responsibility of being free or having charge of themselves or having to think and plan for themselves and their children seemed to take possession of them it was very much like suddenly turning a youth of 10 or 12 years out into the world to provide for himself in a few hours the great question with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved these were the questions of a home, a living, the varying of children, education citizenship and the establishments and support of churches was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling of deep gloom seems to pervade the slave quarters to some it seemed that they were in actual possession of it freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it some of the slaves were 70 or 80 years old their best days were gone they had no strength for which to earn a living in a strange place and among strange people even if they have been sure where to find a new place of a boat to this class the problem seemed especially hard besides deep down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to old masters and to old missus and to their children which they found it hard to think of breaking off of these they had spent in some cases nearly half a century and it was no light thing to think of parting gradually one by one healthily at first the older slaves began to wander from the slave quarters back to the big house to have a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future End of Chapter 1 Recording by Andy Yu Mississauga, Canada For more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Chapter 2 Boyhood Days After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all the people on our place were agreed and I found that this was generally true throughout the south and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free In some way a feeling got among the colored people that it was far from proper for them to bear the surnames of their former owners and a great many of them took other surnames This was one of the first signs of freedom When they were slaves they were simply called John or Susan There was seldom occasion for more than the use of the one name If John or Susan belonged to a white man by the name of Hatcher sometimes he was called John Hatcher or as often Hatcher's John But there was a feeling that John Hatcher or Hatcher's John was not the proper title by which to denote a free man and so in many cases John Hatcher was changed to John S. Lincoln or John S. Sherman the initial S standing for no name had been simply a part of what the colored man proudly called his entitles As I have stated most of the colored people left the old plantation for a short while at least so as to be sure it seemed that they could leave their freedom on to see how it felt after they had remained away for a while many of the older slaves especially returned to their old homes and made some kind of contract with their former owners by which they remained on the estate My mother's husband who was the stepfather of my brother John and myself did not belong to the same owners as did my mother In fact he seldom came to our plantation I remember seeing him there perhaps once a year that being about Christmas time in some way during the war by running away and following the federal soldiers it seems he found his way into the new state of West Virginia As soon as freedom was declared he sent for my mother to come to Canawa Valley in West Virginia At that time a journey from Virginia over the mountains to West Virginia was rather a tedious and in some cases a painful undertaking What little clothing and few household goods we had were placed in a cart but the children walked the greater portion of the distance which was several hundred miles I do not think that any of us had ever been very far from the plantation and the taking of a long journey into another state was quite an event The parting from our former owners and the members of our own race on the plantation was a serious occasion From the time of our parting till their death we kept up a correspondence with the older members of the family and in later years we have kept in touch with those who were the younger members We were several weeks making the trip and most of the time we were in the open air and did our cooking over a log fire out of doors One night I recall that we camped near an abandoned log cabin and my mother decided to build a fire in that for cooking and afterward to make a pallet on the floor for our sweeping Just as the fire had gotten well started a large black snake fully a yard and a half long dropped down the chimney on the floor Of course we had once abandoned that cabin Finally we reached our destination a little town called Mulden which is about five miles from Charleston the present capital of the state At that time salt mining was the great industry in that part of West Virginia and the little town of Mulden was right in the midst of the salt furnaces My stepfather secured a job at his salt furnace and he had also secured a little cabin for us to live in Our new house was no better than the one we had left on the old plantation in Virginia In fact, in one respect it was worse Notwithstanding the poor condition of our plantation cabin we were at all times sure of pure air Our new home was in the midst of a cluster of cabins crowded closely together and as there were no sanitary regulations, the filth about the cabins was often intolerable Some of our neighbors were colored people and some were the poorest and most ignorant and degraded white people It was a motley mixture Drinking, gambling, quarrels fights and shockingly immoral practices were frequent All who lived in the little town were in one way or another connected with the salt business Though I was a mere child my stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces Often I began work as early as four o'clock in the morning The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while working in the salt furnace Each salt packer had his barrels marked with a certain number The number allocated to my stepfather was 18 At the close of the day's work the boss of the packers would come around and put 18 on each of our barrels and I soon learned to recognize that figure wherever I saw it and after a while got to the point where I could make that figure though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters 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 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 Soon after we got settled in some manner in our new cabin in West Virginia I induced my mother to get hold of a book for me However where she got it I do not know why she procured an old copy of Webster's blueback spelling book which contained the alphabet followed by such meaningless words as ab, ba, ka, da I began at once to devour this book and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it all of course without a teacher for I could find no one to teach me At that time there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read and I was too timid to approach any of the white people In some way within a few weeks I mastered the greater portion of the alphabet in all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared her ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could Though she was totally ignorant she had high ambitions for her children and a large fund of good hard common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation If I have done anything in life worth attention I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother In the midst of my struggles and longing for an education a young colored boy who had learned to read in the state of Ohio came to Maldon As soon as the colored people found out that he could read a newspaper was secured and at the close of nearly every day's work this young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers of who I used to envy this man He seemed to me to be the one young man in all the world who ought to be satisfied with his attainments About this time the question of having some kind of school opened for the colored children in the village began to be discussed by members of the race as it would be the first school for Negro children that had ever been opened in that part of Virginia to be a great event and the discussion excited the wildest interest The most perplexing question was where to find a teacher The young man from Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered but his age was against him In the midst of the discussion about a teacher another young colored man from Ohio who had been a soldier in some way found his way into town who soon learned that he possessed a considerable education and he was engaged by the colored people to teach their first school as yet no free schools had been started for colored people in that section hence each family agreed to pay a certain amount per month with the understanding that the teacher was to board round that is spend a day with each family This was not bad for the teacher for each family we tried to provide the very best on the day the teacher was to be its guest I recall that I looked forward with an anxious appetite to teacher's day at our little cabin This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people with my race showed for an education As I have stated it was a whole race trying to go to school Few were too young and none too old to make the attempt to learn As fast as any kind of teachers could be secured not only were day schools filled but night schools as well The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died With this end in view men and women who were 50 or 75 years old would often be found in the night school Some day schools were formed soon after the freedom but the principal book studied in the Sunday school was the spelling book Day school, night school, Sunday school were always crowded and often many had to be turned away for want of room The opening of the school in Kenava Valley however brought to me one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced I had been working in the salt furnace for several months and my stepfather had discovered that I had a financial value and so when the school opened he decided that he could not spare me from my work This decision seemed my every ambition The disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school mornings and afternoons Despite this disappointment however I determined that I would learn something anyway I applied myself with greater eagerness than ever to the mastering of what was in the blueback dollar My mother sympathized with me and my disappointment and sought to comfort me in all the ways she could and to help me find a way to learn After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher to give me some lessons at night after the day's work was done These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more at night than the other children did My own experiences in the night school gave me faith in the night school I did which in after years I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee But my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day's school and I let no opportunity slip to push my case Finally I won and was permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months 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 The school house was some distance from the furnace and as I had to work till nine o'clock and the school opened at nine I found myself in a difficulty School would always be begun before I reached it and sometimes my class had recited To get around this difficulty I yielded to a temptation for which most people I suppose will condemn me but since it is a fact I might as well state it I have great faith in the power and influence of facts It is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact There was a large clock in the little office in the furnace The clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day's work I got the idea that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half past eight up to the nine o'clock mark This I found myself doing morning after morning till the furnace boss discovered that something was wrong and locked the clock in a case I did not mean to inconvenience anybody I simply meant to reach that school house in time When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time I also found myself confronted with two other difficulties In the first place I found that all the other children were hats or caps on their heads and I had neither hat nor cap In fact, I do not remember that up to the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of covering upon my head nor do I recall that either I or anyone else had even thought anything about the need for covering for my head But, of course when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite uncomfortable As usual, I put the case before my mother and she explained to me no money with which to buy a store hat which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young or old to own but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty She accordingly got two pieces of home spun jeans and sewed them together and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me and I have tried as best I could to teach it to others I have always felt proud whenever I think of the incident that my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a store hat when she was not I have always felt proud that she refused to go into that for that which she did not have the money to pay for Since that time I have owned many kinds of caps and hats but never one of which I have felt so proud of as the cap made of the two pieces of cloth sewed together by my mother I have noted the fact but without satisfaction I need not add that several of the boys who began their careers with store hats and who were my schoolmates and used to join in the sport that was made of me because I had only a home spun cap have ended their careers in the penitentiary while others are not able now to buy any kind of hat My second difficulty was with regard to my name or rather a name from the time that I could remember anything I had been called simply Booker before going to school it never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name when I heard the school role called I noticed that all the boys had at least two names and some of them indulged in what seemed to me to be the extravagance of having three I was in deep perplexity because I knew that the teacher would demand at least two names and I had only one by the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation and so when the teacher asked me what my full name was I calmly told him Booker Washington as if I had been called by that name all my life and by that name I have since been known if I found that my mother had given me the name of Booker Taliver soon after I was born but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten but as soon as I found out about it I revived it and made my full name Booker Taliver Washington I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have more than once I tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honored or distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years and who had not only inherited name but fortune and a proud family homestead and yet I sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these and had been a member of a more popular race I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my color to do that for me which I should do for myself years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud and which might encourage them to still greater effort and encouragement upon the Negro and especially the Negro youth too quickly or too harshly the Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements and temptations to battle that are little known to those not situated as he is when a white boy undertakes the task it is taken for granted that he will succeed on the other hand people are usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail or the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him the influence of ancestry however is important in helping forward any individual or race if too much reliance is not placed upon it those who constantly direct attention to the Negro youth's moral weaknesses and compare his advancement with that of white youths do not consider the influence of memories which cling about the old family homesteads I have no idea as I have stated elsewhere who my grandmother was I have or have had uncles and aunts and cousins but I have no knowledge as to where most of them are my case will illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part of our country the very fact that a white boy is conscious if he fails in life he will disgrace the whole family record extending back through many generations is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations the fact that the individual has behind and surrounded him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success the time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was short and my attendance was irregular it was not long before I had to stop attending day school altogether and devote all my time again to work I resorted to night school again in fact the greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered through the night school after my day's work was done I had difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher sometimes after I had secured someone to teach me at night I would find much to my disappointment that the teacher knew but little more than I did often I would have to walk several miles at night in order to recite my night school lessons there was never a time in my youth no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be when one resolved to not continually remain with me and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost soon after we moved to West Virginia my mother adopted into our family, notwithstanding our poverty an orphan boy to whom afterward we gave the name of James B. Washington he has ever since remained part of the family after I had worked in the salt furnace for some time work was secured for me in a coal mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of securing fuel for the salt furnace work in the coal mine I always dreaded one reason for this was that anyone who worked in a coal mine was always in clean at least while at work and it was a very hard job to get one skin clean after the day's work was over then it was fully a mile from the opening of the coal mine to the face of the coal and all of course was in blackest darkness I do not believe that one ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a coal mine the mine was divided into a large number of different rooms or departments I was never able to learn the location of all of these rooms I many times found myself lost in the mine to add to the horror of being lost sometimes my light would go out and then if I did not happen to have a match I would wander about in the darkness until by chance I found someone to give me a light the work was not only hard but it was dangerous there was always the danger of being blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder or being crushed by falling slight accidents from one or another of these causes were frequently occurring and this kept me in constant fear many children of the tenderest years were compelled then as it is now true I fear in most coal mining districts to spend the large part of their lives in these coal mines with little opportunity to get an education and what is worse I have often noted that as a rule young boys who begin life in a coal mine are often physically and mentally dwarfed they soon lose the ambition to do anything else than continue as a coal miner in those days and later as a young man I used to picture in my imagination the feeling and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities I used to envy the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a congressman, governor, bishop or president by reason of the accident of his birth or race I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success in later years I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed looked at from this standpoint I have reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage so far as real life is concerned with few exceptions the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure a recognition but out of the hard and unusual struggle he gets the strength the confidence the one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race from any point of view I had rather be what I am a member of the Negro race than be able to claim membership with the most favorite of any other race I have always been made sad when I hear members of any race claiming or privileges or certain badge of distinction on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race regardless of their own individual worth or attainments I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic individual merit every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law which is universal and eternal that merit no matter under what skin sound is in the long run recognized and rewarded this I have said here not to call attention to myself as an individual but to the race of which I am proud to belong End of chapter 2