A Boys' Life of Booker T. Washington/Chapter 1
A BOYS' LIFE OF
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
CHAPTER I
EARLY CHILDHOOD
No state in the Union has a more interesting history than Virginia. It is the oldest of the states. It was at Jamestown in 1607 that the first permanent English settlement was made in America. Before the Revolution, it shared with Massachusetts the honor of being the leading colony. During the time of the Revolution, it furnished some of America's greatest leaders—Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson. After the Revolution, it became known as the "Mother of Presidents." Most of the battles of the Civil War were fought on its soil, and its capital was the capital of the Confederacy. Lee and Jackson, the two greatest leaders of the Confederacy, were Virginians.
It was in this state that slavery in North America began. We must remember, however, that slavery had been in existence a long, long time. The ancient Hebrews, we are told in the Old Testament, practiced this evil custom. So did all the nations about Palestine. The Greeks and the Romans also kept slaves. We must not think of the people that were enslaved by the Hebrews and Greeks and Romans as negroes. They were of all races. Whenever one people conquered another, it mattered not of what race, the conquerors made their captives slaves. This often resulted in the most cultured and highly educated people being made slaves. This was especially the case when the Romans captured Greeks.
Later on in the history of Europe, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the enslavement of negroes became very general, so that, by the time North America began to be settled by the people from Europe, negro slaves were bought and sold throughout the principal European countries and their colonies.
So it came about that, in Virginia, negro slavery was introduced into the United States. It was in 1619 that a Dutch ship, after a cruise in the West Indies, landed at Jamestown, and while there, engaging in trade with the inhabitants, sold them nineteen negroes. These were the first slaves sold in North America, and it was from this beginning that the system grew up in the country.
In Virginia too we had the first big plantations. Tobacco was the most important crop in the early history of the colony. The planters could sell tobacco at a great profit in England. Negro slaves could cultivate tobacco very successfully. The planters, therefore, bought slaves to raise tobacco, and they sold the tobacco and bought more slaves to raise more tobacco. The planters bought many hundreds of acres of land and many slaves to cultivate them. As you know, the slaves lived in cabins. These cabins were little houses, usually built of logs, and the cracks were daubed with mud. The cabin usually had one door, one window, and a dirt floor only. These cabins were all close together, not very far from the "big house," and were known as the "quarters."
The slaves did all the work on the plantation. Most of them worked in the fields. Some worked about the barn and in the garden. One drove the master's carriage and took care of the horses. Another was the butler in the "big house." Some of the small boys and girls also worked in the "big house," serving their young masters and mistresses. And, of course, one of the negro women was the plantation cook.
On just such a plantation down in Franklin County, Virginia, Booker T. Washington was born. His mother was the cook on the plantation of a Mr. Burroughs who lived near a little crossroads post office, southwest of Lynchburg, called Hales' Ford. There, in a little one-room cabin, Booker was born on April 5, 1856. The cabin had no glass windows. It had only one door, and it had a dirt floor. There were large cracks that let in the cold. In the middle of the floor there was a large opening in the ground in which sweet potatoes were stored. Sometimes as they put the potatoes in or took them out, Booker got one or two and roasted them. All of the cooking was done over the open fire in this cabin, for they had no stove. It was a very uncomfortable place in which to live.
The boy lived a hard life. He says: "I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner. It was a piece of bread here, and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another."[1]
One day, when he was about five years old, he saw his young mistress and some visitors out in the yard eating ginger cakes. He said he never saw anything in his life that looked so good to him as those cakes did; and he thought that, if he ever got free, the height of his ambition would be to buy all the ginger cakes he wanted, just like those the young ladies were eating.
He had to sleep on a pallet. He never slept in a bed until after he was set free. The first pair of shoes he ever had was made of leather, but the soles were of wood, and they were very uncomfortable and made a great noise when he walked. He never thought of wearing anything on his head. But the worst thing about his dress in those early days was having to wear a flax shirt. These shirts were made of the roughest and coarsest part of the flax, and they were very uncomfortable. When new, they scratched severely. After they were worn awhile and "broken in," they were fairly comfortable. His brother John often "broke in" Booker's shirts for him, a very kind and generous thing to do.
He had no time to play when he was a boy. When he was a grown man, he was asked what games he played when he was a boy, and he answered that he had never played at all. He had to work so hard that no time was left for play. Even when he was a very small boy, he had to sweep the yards, carry water to the hands in the fields, help around the "big house," and carry in wood. Going to mill was the worst job he had. A farm hand would put a sack of corn on a horse, put him on top of the sack, and send him off. It was a long way to the mill. Almost every time he was sent, the sack of corn would work to one side and then fall off. It was too heavy for him to put back; so he would have to wait until some one came along to help him. He sat and cried until some one came. It was often dark when he got home. He was terribly frightened when he was alone at night, for he was told that there were deserting soldiers in the woods, and that when they found little negro boys the first thing they would do would be to cut off their ears. Of course this was not true, but he thought it was.
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."[2] 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.
It must be remembered that the conditions under which Booker lived in these early years of his life were not restricted entirely to the negroes. Many of the white people were poor also, and many white boys wore flax shirts and shoes with wooden soles. Just after the Civil War, especially, all the white people of the South had a very hard time. White boys as well as negro boys had no time for play. Nor did they have an opportunity to go to school. In those days many white boys who were eager for an education had such difficulties to face as those which loomed up before Booker Washington.
By and by, when Booker was about nine years of age, there came a thrilling day. For four long years the great war had been going on. Often he had heard his mother singing freedom songs. He remembered being awakened one morning and saw his mother by his bed and heard her praying that Lincoln might be successful, and that her little boy might some day be free. He had seen some of the soldiers in their uniforms, home on furlough. He remembered when they brought home the body of "Marse Billy" and buried him amidst the bitter weeping of the slaves, who loved him as their friend, for he had often begged for them when they were about to be punished. While they vaguely knew and felt that the success of Lincoln meant freedom, and the success of the others meant slavery, they were still loyal and true to their masters. By means of the "grape vine telegraph," that is, by passing news along quickly from one plantation to another, the slaves had kept pretty well informed of the progress of the war, and when Lee surrendered at Appomattox, the slaves knew it very soon.
One night word came to the "quarters" that something very unusual would happen at the "big house" the next day. There was much excitement. Nobody slept that night. Early next morning some one came to the quarters and told the negroes that they were all wanted at the house. Booker's mother called her children, and they with all the other slaves marched up to the house. All the members of the family were on the porch. They were very quiet and seemed sad and depressed. There was present a stranger, a man who wore a uniform. He stood up and read a paper—"The Emancipation Proclamation." Then the master explained that the negroes were now free. He told them that they could go wherever they desired. He also told them that they could live where they were if they wanted to, and they would be taken care of; but if they preferred, they could go to any other place. Booker's mother leaned over her children and kissed them while the tears streamed down her face. Her prayers had been answered. Her children were free.