Opinion
By Bill Federer
10/20/24
Booker T. Washington was born in a slave hut on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia, APRIL 5, 1856.
He taught himself to read and write, stating:
“In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could.”
He attended school after working all day.
At age 16, after the Civil War had ended, Booker T. Washington walked nearly 500 miles to attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia, founded by Union General Samuel Chapman Armstrong.
Washington stated:
“I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was but a type of that Christ-like body of men and women who went into the Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting up my race.
The history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way into those Negro schools.”
Graduating from the Hampton Institute in 1875, Booker T. Washington wrote in his book, Up From Slavery, 1901:
“Perhaps the most valuable thing that I got out of my second year at the Hampton Institute was an understanding of the use and value of the Bible.
Miss Nathalie Lord, one of the teachers, from Portland, Maine, taught me how to use and love the Bible …
… I learned to love to read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help which it gives, but on account of it as literature.
Link to full article here in American Minute: Booker T. Washington “Cultivate friendship of neighbor-black or white” – AmericanMinute.com-William J. Federer
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
