This is for all students:
Use the story of Mr. Washington and understand the power of education to help you reach your goals!JB
For Get Nichols, whose encouragement and enthusiasm for education was invaluable to my formative years and beyondJM
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Text copyright 2018 by James Buckley Jr. Illustrations copyright 2018 by Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Workshop, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. PENGUIN and PENGUIN WORKSHOP are trademarks of Penguin Books Ltd. WHO HQ & Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 9780448488516 (paperback)
ISBN 9781524786120 (library binding)
ISBN 9781524788827 (ebook)
Version_1
Contents
Who Was Booker T. Washington?
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in the Southern state of Virginia in 1856. He was one of millions of people of African descent forced to work in the fields of large farms, called plantations, without pay. They were considered property by white people who called themselves masters.
White children lived in and near the plantation, too. They were the sons and daughters of the masters and paid white workers. They studied together in a schoolhouse. As a young boy, Booker walked by the school building many times. He knew something amazing was happening inside, and he wanted very badly to be a part of it.
Sometimes, he would be told to carry the books of one of the plantation masters daughters. He would walk her to the door of the schoolhouse, but no farther. He peered inside before the door closed in his face. He later wrote that the picture of several dozen boys and girls 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.
Booker dreamed about the world of books, reading, and education. But it was a risky dream.
Enslaved children were not allowed to go to school. It was even illegal for a slave to learn to read! One of the main reasons white owners didnt want slaves to be educated was so that they would not find out about the world outside their plantation.
From the moment that [I was told] that it was dangerous for me to learn to read... I resolved that I should never be satisfied until I learned what this dangerous practice was like. Booker knew that if he was caught with a book, he might be whipped as punishment.
But still he dreamed. And Booker made learning his life. He studied hard and eventually became a teacher. He helped thousands of African Americans and former slaves get an education. He also inspired the creation of dozens of schools and universities for black people.
Booker worked his whole life to give others the chance at learning that he had struggled to get. His devotion to education for African Americans made him famous around the world. He showed that with focus and determination, a person could come up from slavery to a better life.
CHAPTER 1
A Difficult Beginning
When Booker T. Washington was born on a farm in Virginia on April 5, 1856, he did not have a last name. He was just called Booker. He was born a slave. Bookers mother, Jane, was also a slave. She cooked for everyone on the farm. Bookers older brother, John, was a slave, too. Who my father was, I have never been able to learn with any degree of certainty, Booker wrote.
Dozens of other slaves lived and worked on the farm. They were forced to do whatever work their mastersthe bosses on the farmtold them to do. They werent paid for their labor. All the slaves were owned by Mr. Burroughs. They had no rights of their own.
The slaves on the Burroughs farm were not alone. Throughout the Southern United States, millions of black people were enslaved. For more than one hundred years, they had been kidnapped and taken from Africa to the United States and islands throughout the Caribbean. Slaves were considered property, the same as a horse for riding or a plow to use in the fields.
Families were broken up and sold to other plantations. Children could be taken from their mothers and sold, too. If a slave ever dared to disobey his master, he could be punished by whipping or worse.
About his early life as a slave, Booker later wrote that it had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surrounding.
Bookers home was a small shack. The floor was dirt and there were no windowsjust the openings where windows should have been. The door was a thin plank of wood that did not shut completely. Cold wind blew in during the winter, and dust blew through in the summer. The children in Bookers family slept on a pile of rags on the floor.
The first pair of shoes Booker wore had soles made of wood and were very uncomfortable. His clothes were made from a rough and scratchy fabric called flax. Booker said that putting on his new flax shirt was torture.
Jane was very busy cooking all day long and could not spend much time with her sons. Booker later wrote that his family never sat down to a meal together. He said that the children got their meals much as the dumb animals [got] theirs.
