Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/22

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BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

would do would be to cut off their ears. Of course this was not true, but he thought it was.

Founder's Day Drill at Tuskegee

Do you suppose this little boy had any chance to go to school? This is what he says: "I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise."[1] This is the same boy who came to be the greatest educator of his race; the head of the greatest negro school in the world.

  1. "Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington, pp. 6–7.