Sometimes one could find out that there are people whose abilities and energy take them far beyond any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one such person. He rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the 19th century. For decades, he was the major African-American spokesman. He was lecturer, Civil Rights/Human Rights Activist, Educational Administrator, Professor, Organization Executive/Founder and Author/Poet. His childhood is recorded in his autobiography, Up From Slavery which this writer had the fortune of reading in his early years in an abridged edition at the second form of the Prince of Wales School at Kingtom, western Freetown in Sierra Leone West Africa from which end Washington's ancestors may well have hailed.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation."at the community of Hale's Ford, Virginia. This was in what he described as "the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings" His mother Jane was a black slave who worked as a cook for a small planter. His father was a white plantation owner whom he never knew. Under the laws then, his mother's status also made young Booker a slave. His childhood was thus one of privation, poverty, slavery and back-breaking work. He was from birth the property of James Burroughs of Virginia. His mother, Jane, raised him, and he was put to work as early as possible.
In April 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home. He recalled this in Up from Slavery. . He was seven years old when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves. It could not be enforced until the end of the Civil War by the Thirteenth Amendment. The former slaves were at first jubilant about being free but it quickly became apparent that there was no place for most of them to go. 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 into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom
.... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (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 praying, but fearing that she would never live to see...
After emancipation, his family was so poverty stricken that they could not make it on their own. So Booker Washington moved out with his mother and three siblings to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. where he had been fortunate to have found work packing salt. The young boy took a job in this salt mine. Work began there at 4 a.m. so that he could attend school later in the day. The nine-year old Washington spent long, exhausting days packing salt.
He worked with his mother and other free blacks not only as a salt-packer in a salt mine. He also worked in a coal mine. He even signed up briefly as a hired hand on a steamboat. However, soon he became employed as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the salt-furnace and coal mine. Many other houseboys had failed to satisfy the demanding and methodical Mrs. Ruffner, but Booker's diligence and attention to detail met her standards. Encouraged to do so by Mrs. Ruffner, when he could, young Booker attended school and learned to read and to write. And soon, he sought even more education than was available in his community.
Always an intelligent and curious child, like many blacks after Emancipation he yearned for an education. So despite the exhausting days he used his free time to go to school in the evenings. .He was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally. So when he was 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he traveled 500 miles, often by walking, to enroll at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. He did not know if he could get in, and if he got in he didn't know how he was going to pay for it, He arrived with only 50 cents in his pocket. The head teacher suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.
Students with little income such as Washington could get a place there by working to pay their way. So the institute gave him a job as a janitor to pay for school fees He thus paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. The normal school (teachers college) at Hampton was founded for the purpose of training black teachers and had been largely funded by church groups and individuals such as William Jackson Palmer, a Quaker, among others. In many ways he was back where he had started, earning a living through menial tasks, but his time at Hampton led him away from a life of labor. Hampton Institute was started and run by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Armstrong and the institution he created were to become the one great influence in Washington's life. Armstrong believed in work, study, hygiene, morality, self-discipline and self-reliance - in large amounts. It was not a place for slackers. Armstrong's purpose was to train black teachers, but he believed every student should have a trade as well. Washington imbibed these principles so well in him that later, when he developed the Tuskegee Institute it emphasized these same qualities and convictions.
Booker T. Washington who had only managed to get a primary education that allowed his probationary admittance to Hampton Institute proved such an exemplary student, teacher, and speaker that the principal of Hampton recommended him to Alabamans who were trying to establish a school for African Americans in their state. There, he worked his way through, later attending Wayland Seminary to return as an instructor.
Arthur Smith
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