The Hawaiian gazette., 1915-11-16
7 LIE. OF WORLDS
IL GREATEST NEGRO

Some time ago, Columbian Magazine
published an account of the career of
Booker T. Washington in which it told
how he was born in slavery and rose
to leadership of his lace. The story is
as follows:
81 am not quite 'sure of the date or
place of my birth, but it occurred in
Franklin County, Virginia, and the year
was 1858 or 1859. OF my ancestry /
know almost nothing. My mother, /
suppose, attracted the attention of a
purchaser who was afterwards my own.
er and hers. OF my father l know
even less than of my mother. | do
not even know his name; but | do not
find especial fault with him. He was
simply another unfortunate victim OF
the institution which the United States
of so years ago had inherited from
the founders of the Union"
Thus, calmly and dispassionately, this
man, friend of four Presidents-Cleve
land, Mckinley, Roosevelt, Taft re
fers to his part in the conditions which
threw him on the world without a
name.
Someone asked him once, what the
pastimes of his youth had been. Until
the question had been put, he, himself,
had scarcely realized that there had
been no portion of his life devoted to
amusements. His early childhood,
passed in slavery, was busted by a
thousand tasks, and fearful always OF
the whip. He is now at the head Of
his great school, which many folk re
! gard as of more real Importance to the
nation than any single college in the
North, but, '"I had,' he said to M
one day, ono schooling whatever while
| ! was slave or in my early years Of
| freedom.
~ learned that / and mine were
Slaves he says, when my mother :
fervent PRAYERS that Lincoln and his
armies might win victory and free us,
woke me up at night. / had not known
before just what it was, besides the
color of our skins, which made us so
| different. With every other cOlOrpd
| person in the South, nv mother had,
and impaired to me, the thought that
| Just as soon as freedom came miIlrn-
mum would dawn for all of us. The
one thing which hoped it would bring
| me was schooling
Freedom, when it came, however, did
not make life less hut more Iahorious
for this roIorrd family, and the step
father put the boy at work in West
virginia salt furnace, where his task
began at a. m and lasted until dark
This troubled him much less than it
would have had there been, in case Of
freedom from labor, any opportunity
in the neighbOrhOOd for schooling, but
there was none, and he worked willing
| ~, learning to read crudcly by study.
ing the stPnciIed symbols on the bar
rels, firm in the belief that when the
chance came for him to 90 to school
| he would be permitted to. His first
learning was of the meaning of "lS. -
! His yearnng for an education soon be
came an all absOrbing thing.
| But when a school was opened by
the cOlored people Of the neighborhood
his stepfather kept him at work and
would not let him go to il This al
most broke his heart. His mother,
however, managed, after a time, to get
him in the night school, and the child
stole time from sleep to learn from a
Webster's blue backed spelling book
| Later he hogan work in the furnace at
! a. m. and was permitted to knock of
at 8 for few hours in the day. school,
going back to work again as soon as
the session ended. One of the NORTH
cations of his first day was that the
other pupils all wore something on
their heads. He had never owned a
hat or cap. His second difficulty was
in regard to a name He had been
simply known AS "BOoker' before
that, for some reason which de does not
know. But when the moment came
and the teacher asked him what his
name was, he said boldly, calmly,
"BOoker Washington, and he has
been called that all his life. Later he
| learned that the name his mother really
| had given him was Booker Tnlir
fero," and he added the initial "T'
| to "BOOker."
! More than once,' he writes, ~