he Gospel, man by man, house by house, gathering them
on Sundays, a few--twenty, fifty, or a hundred as the case might
be--and preaching the Gospel more formally to them as they were able to
bear it."

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

(1858-1915)

THE BOY WHO SLEPT UNDER THE SIDEWALK

Two or three years before the outbreak of the Civil War a little black
baby was born in the slave quarters on a Virginia plantation. This was
not a surprising event and nobody except the mother paid it any
attention. Even the father of the child ignored it. For some years
the boy "just growed," after the manner of Topsy. Nobody helped him.
But the boy differed in one way from his thoughtless little playmates.
There was a mysterious something in him that drove him eagerly to avail
himself of any opportunity for self-improvement that came along. If
the opportunity, as generally happened, _failed_ to "come along," he
went after it with all his might and main.

He devoted his life unreservedly to the service of his coloured
brethren, and through his own bitter experience he knew full well the
best way in which to help them.

From "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington. Doubleday, Page &
Co., 1901.

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am
not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As
nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads
post-office called Hale's Ford and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not
know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall
are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part
of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my
owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
others. I was born in a typical log-cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even
later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while
being co