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INSTRUCTOR LITERATURE SERIES




The Story of Slavery


_By Booker T. Washington_
President of Tuskegee Institute; author of
"Up From Slavery," Etc.

_With Biographical Sketch_


PUBLISHED JOINTLY BY
F. A. OWEN PUB. CO., DANSVILLE, N. Y.

HALL & McCREARY, CHICAGO, ILL.


COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING CO.




_The Story of Slavery_




BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

BY EMMETT J. SCOTT


Booker T. Washington, the author of the following sketch of slavery in
America, was himself born a slave, and the story of his life begins
where "The Story of Slavery" leaves off. He was born about 1858 or 1859
on a plantation near Hales Ford, Va., about twenty-five miles east of
the city of Roanoke, in a region which, now almost deserted, was in
slavery days a flourishing tobacco country. A few years ago he was
invited to speak at the annual fair at Roanoke, and took advantage of
the opportunity to drive out to the old plantation to visit again the
scene of his childhood. He met there several members of the Burroughs
family to which he had formerly belonged, and with them he went through
the old Burroughs house, which is standing, and talked over the old
days.

It was while he was living there that he was awakened one morning to
find his mother kneeling on the earth floor of the little cabin in which
they lived, praying that "Lincoln and his armies might be successful and
that one day she and her children might be free." It was here a little
later on, as he tells us in the book, "Up From Slavery," in which he has
related the story of his life, that he heard the announcement that he
and all the other slaves were free.

"I recall," he says, "that some man who seemed to be a stranger and who
was undoubtedly a United States official, 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 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 so long been
praying, but fearing she would never live to see.

"For some minutes," he continues, "there was great rejoicing, and
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 of the emancipated <DW52> people lasted but
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, of having charge of themselves and their children, of having
to plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of
them. To some it seemed, now that they were in actual possession of it,
freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find.
Gradually one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to
wander back to the 'big house' to have whispered conversations with
their former owners as to their future."

Thus it was that freedom came to Washington and so it came, perhaps, to
some three and one-half millions of others on their plantations
throughout the South.

Shortly after the "surrender," as the Southern people say, young
Washington made a long journey across the mountains with his mother to
West Virginia where his stepfather was then living, and it was in Malden
he grew up to young manhood. Malden is situated in the mining region of
West Virginia, and after a time young Washington went to work in the
mines. It was while he was working down in the coal mines of West
Virginia that he one day overheard one of the miners reading from a
paper concerning a school at Hampton, Virginia, where a <DW64> in earnest
would be given a chance to work his way through school. He determined at
once that he would seek