The Story of My Life and Work quotes

The first time that I got a knowledge of the fact that my mother and I were slaves, was by being awakened by my mother early one morning, while I was sleeping in a bed of rags, on a clay floor of our little cabin.

She was kneeling over me, fervently praying as was her custom to do, that some day she and her children might be free.

The name of my mother was Jane. She, to me, will always remain the noblest embodiment of womanhood with whom I have come in contact.

She was kneeling over me, fervently praying as was her custom to do, that some day she and her children might be free. The name of my mother was Jane.

She, to me, will always remain the noblest embodiment of womanhood with whom I have come in contact.

She was wholly ignorant, as far as books were concerned, and, I presume, never had a book in her hands for two minutes at a time.

At the time I came into the world no careful registry of births of people of my complexion was kept. My birth place was near Hale’s Ford, in Franklin County, Virginia.

It was about as near to Nowhere as any locality gets to be, so far as I can learn.

Hale’s Ford, I think, was a town with one house and a postoffice, and my birth place was on a large plantation several miles distant from it.

In Virginia, the tow shirt was quite an institution during slavery. This shirt was made of the refuse flax that grew in that part of Virginia, and it was a veritable instrument of torture. It was stiff and coarse.

Until it had been worn for about six weeks it made one feel as if a thousand needle points were pricking his flesh.

I suppose I was about six years old when I was given one of these shirts to wear. After repeated trials the torture was more than my childish flesh could endure and I gave it up in despair.

When he came to me he asked for my full name, and I told him to put me down as “Booker Washington,” and that name I have borne ever since.

It is not every school boy who has the privilege of choosing his own name.

In introducing me to an audience in Essex Hall,

It seemed to me that the distance from the opening of the mine to the place where I had to work was at least a mile and a half. Although I had to leave school I did not give up my search for knowledge.

I took my book into the coal mine, and during the spare minutes I tried to read by the light of the little lamp which hung on my cap.

Not long after I began to work in the mines my mother hired some one to teach me at night, but often, after walking a considerable distance for a night’s lesson, I found that my teacher knew but little more than I did.

While at Hampton my best friends did not know how badly off I was for clothing during a large part of the time, but I did not fret about that.

I always had the feeling that if I could get knowledge in my head the matter of clothing would take care of itself afterwards.

At one time I was reduced to a single ragged pair of cheap socks. These socks I had to wash over night and put them on the next morning.

Miss Lord was the teacher of reading, and she kindly consented to give me many extra lessons in elocution. These lessons I have since found most valuable to me.

Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; it was constantly taking me into a new world.

The matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new to me.

I wish to add here that, in later years, 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 almost reach the conclusion that often the negro boy’s birth and connection with an unpopular race are an advantage, so far as real life is concerned.

Many of our best friends, however, doubted the practicability of this, but I insisted that it could be done.

I held that while the students at first might make very poor bricks and do poor brick-masonry, the lesson of self-help would be more valuable to them in the long run than if they were put into a building which had been wholly the creation of the generosity of some one else.

By the end of the third year the number of students had increased from 30, with which we began, to 169; most of them, however, coming from nearby counties and other sections of Alabama.

Are we going to apply the knowledge we gain at school? Are we going to keep up with the world, or are we going to let these occupations, which mean our very life blood, slip from us?

Education in itself is worthless; it is only as it is used that it is of value.

A man might as well fill his head with so much cheap soup as with learning unless he is going to use his knowledge.’

Are we going to keep up with the world, or are we going to let these occupations, which mean our very life blood, slip from us? Education in itself is worthless; it is only as it is used that it is of value.

A man might as well fill his head with so much cheap soup as with learning unless he is going to use his knowledge.

’

“One trouble with the average Negro, said the speaker, was he was always hungry, and it was impossible to make progress along educational, moral or religious lines while in that condition.

It was a hard matter to make a Christian out of a hungry man.

It had often been contended that the Negro needed no industrial education, because he already knew too well how to work.

shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

“

There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.

If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest.

that the colored people have been helped to a fuller knowledge of their capabilities, and that they have been taught a practical lesson in the value of co-operation. Neither of these points can be too much emphasized.

Without self-confidence, self-respect, a certain amount of self-assurance of the proper kind, nothing can be achieved, either by an individual or by a race.

We must believe in ourselves, if we would have people believe in us. If we wonder, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ what must we expect of others?

Neither of these points can be too much emphasized. Without self-confidence, self-respect, a certain amount of self-assurance of the proper kind, nothing can be achieved, either by an individual or by a race.

We must believe in ourselves, if we would have people believe in us.

If we wonder, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ what must we expect of others?

When Mississippi commits crime, New England commits crime, and in so much, lowers the standard of your civilization.

There is no escape—man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

“In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need, in a large measure in the years that are to come as we have in the past, the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the …

Douglass, and one of them said to him, “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,” Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: “

They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.”

“They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.”

My experience has been, that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

This is illustrated in no better way than by observing the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants.

Some of his white friends who saw the incident, criticised Washington for his action. In reply to their criticism, George Washington said: “

Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, ignorant colored man to be more polite than I am?

”

We can only retain our hold upon the industries of the South by putting into the field men and women of the highest intelligence and skill.

We must learn to do the tasks about our door in a thorough manner; to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; to be sure that nobody else can improve on our work.

In the spring of 1897 I received a letter from Hon. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, inviting me to deliver an address at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston.

But there is a higher and deeper sense in which both races must be free than that represented by the bill of sale.

The black man who cannot let love and sympathy go out to the white man is but half free. The white man who would close the shop or factory against a black man seeking an opportunity to earn an honest living is but half free.

The white man who retards his own development by opposing a black man is but half free.

“

No man can have respect for government and officers of the law when he knows, deep down in his heart, that the exercise of the franchise is tainted with fraud.

“The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the last thirty years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It has been as one groping through the long darkness into the light.

No people had before been given such a problem to solve.

History had blazed no path through the wilderness that could be followed.

For thirty years we have wandered in the wilderness. We are beginning to get out. But there is but one road out, and all makeshifts, expedients, ‘profit and loss calculations,’ but lead into the swamps, quicksands, quagmires and jungles.

“The highest test of civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.

Surely no people ever had a greater chance to exhibit the highest Christian fortitude and magnanimity than is now presented to the people of Louisiana.

She has met the proud Spaniard and he lays prostrate at her feet. All this is well, it is magnificent. But there remains one other victory for Americans to win—a victory as far-reaching and important as any that has occupied our army and navy.

We have succeeded in every conflict, except the effort to conquer ourselves in the blotting out of racial prejudices.

We can celebrate the era of peace in no more effectual way than by a firm resolve on the part of the Northern men and Southern men, black men and white men, that the trenches that we together dug around Santiago shall be the eternal …

… a firm resolve on the part of the Northern men and Southern men, black men and white men, that the trenches that we together dug around Santiago shall be the eternal burial place of all that which separates us in our business and civil relations.

Let us be as generous in peace as we have been brave in battle.

Until we thus conquer ourselves, I make no empty statement when I say that we shall have a cancer gnawing at the heart of the republic that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within.

Whenever I discuss the question of race prejudice I never do so solely in the interest of the Negro; I always take higher ground.

If a black man hates a white man it narrows and degrades his soul. If a white man hates a black man it narrows and degrades his soul.

“Both races will grow stronger in morals and prosper in business just in proportion as in every manly way they cultivate the confidence and friendship of each other.

“

Integrity and industry are the best possessions which any man can have, and every man can have them.

Nobody can give them to him or take them from him. He cannot acquire them by inheritance; he cannot buy them or beg them or borrow them. They belong to the individual and are his unquestioned property. He alone can part with them.

I don’t want anybody’s foot on my neck. I don’t go and say, ‘Mas’r Joe, please sir, I wants a little flour or I wants a little coffee for my old lady,’ but when I want anything I just go and get it.

You must not sit down and trust God; if you do you’ll starve. Get up and go to work and trust God and you’ll get rich.

”

he cannot run away. To own property is to own character.” Another farmer from Macon County said: “The nigger race ain’t such a bugaboo as you think. The trouble with our people is we don’t understand ourselves; we don’t have self-reliance and self-government.

Eight years ago I didn’t have even a meat skin, now I have got eighty acres of land and five mules, all paid for.

You must be a man. Say sink or swim, I’m coming on top; if you don’t you won’t amount to anything.

“We should not as a race become discouraged. We are making progress.

No race has ever gotten upon its feet without discouragements and struggles.

“I should be a great hypocrite and a coward if I did not add that which my daily experience teaches me is true, viz.: that the Negro has among many of the Southern whites as good friends as he has anywhere in the world.

Let him who would embitter, who would bring strife between your race and mine be accursed in his basket and in his store, accursed in the fruit of his body and the fruit of his land.

No man can plan the degradation of another race without being himself degraded.

The highest test of the civilization of any race is its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

But that we may get this question from among us, the white man has a duty to perform, the black man has a duty.

No question is ever permanently settled until it is settled in the principles of the highest justice.

Capital and lawlessness will not dwell together. The white man who learns to disregard law when a Negro is concerned will soon disregard it when a white man is concerned.

I am glad that our first boarding place was in that dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and become “stuck up.”

It means a great deal, I think, to build on a foundation which one has made for himself.

When our students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beautiful, well ventilated, and well lighted dining-room and see tempting, well-cooked food—largely grown by the students themselves—and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the …

Before I went North Gen. Armstrong had talked to me a good deal about what to say and how to say it. I shall always remember one of his injunctions, which was, “

Give them an idea for every word.

” When I first went into the North to get money I began work in one or two of the small towns in the Western part of Massachusetts. As I remember it, the first town that I reached was Northampton.