The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.1, page 416, Extracts from “The Story of the Negro,” 1909, U. of Illinois Press

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BOOKER T. WAS HINGTON . Autobiographical Writings that moment I resolved that I should never be satisfied until I learned what this dangerous practice was like. What was true in my case has been true in the case of thousands of others. If no restriction had been put upon Negro education, I doubt whether such tremendous progress in education would have been made. When I became free all the legal restrictions against my getting education were removed. Nevertheless I heard it stated in public speeches that the Negro was so constituted that he could not learn from books, and that time, effort and money would be thrown away in trying to teach him to master the studies of the ordinary school curriculum. When I heard this, I resolved again that, at the price of any sacrifice, I would do my part in order to prove to the world that the Negro possessed the ability to get an education, and to use it. If I had heard no such prediction regarding the ability of the Negro to get education, I question whether I would have been any more interested in mastering my school studies and text-books than the ordinary white boy. · · · . The primer, the first reader, and most frequently of all, the Webster's blue-back speller, suddenly, as if by a miracle, made their appearance everywhere. Even before the thousands of Negro soldiers had been disbanded, they inveigled their officers into becoming their schoolmasters, and scores of Negro soldiers in every regiment were learning to read and to write and to cipher. On every plantation, and in nearly every home, whether in the town or city, the hidden book that had been tucked away under the floor or in an old trunk or had been concealed in a stump, or between mattresses, suddenly came out of its hiding-place and was put into use. I can recall vividly the picture not only of children, but of men and women, some of whom had reached the age of sixty or seventy, tramping along the country roads with a spelling-book or a Bible in their hands. It did not seem to occur to any one that age was any obstacle to learning in books. With weak and unaccustomed eyes, old risen and old women would struggle along month after month in their effort to master the primer in order to get, if possible, a little knowledge of the Bible. Some of them succeeded; many of them failed. To these latter the thought of passing from earth without being able to read the Bible was a source of deep sorrow. The places for holding school were anywhere and everywhere; the 416