.

In our common, everyday talk we are accustomed to say that the darkest
hour of night precedes the dawn of day. It was so in this instance. The
time of Booker Washington's birth, and for some years after, was
apparently the darkest period in the history of the slaves of the
Southern States. For long the negroes of the plantations not only grew
up quite illiterate--it was a punishable offence for them to make any
endeavour to learn to read, or for anyone to attempt to teach them. Not
very long before the Fugitive Slave Law had found a place in the Statute
Book of the Republic, and this Act made it illegal for any fugitive
slave to find either shelter or aid in any State of the Union. Then,
just about the same time, the American Chief-Justice had, in his
official capacity, declared that nowhere in any one of the States had a
slave any rights of citizenship. In a word, the slaves on a plantation
were simply on a level, in a legal sense, with the cattle they tended or
used in their everyday work. For example, the mere children had no
regular meal times in the conventional sense as we understand things;
and there was little or nothing of what we should recognise as family
life. Thus when, after the era of emancipation, Booker Washington came
to the experience of sleeping in an ordinary bed and sitting down at
table to partake of a family meal, both were a revelation of civilised
existence which were quite new to him.

In a sense the very denial to the slave population of their educational
rights would seem to have had something like the effect of sharpening
their wits, until they became not only interested in what was happening
around them, but the shrewdest observers of the signs of the times. Like
other boys of his race, Booker Washington ran wild when he was not
engaged in his customary errands, and without so much as learning even
the English alphabet. But this compulsory ignorance seems to have
intensified that ardent desire for knowledge which was part of his
nature. Among his errands he might have to go to a schoolhouse where
companies of happy young people were engaged over their books, and he
was naturally much affected by what he saw and heard. Why was not he
privileged in a similar way? Tens of thousands of negro boys may have
asked themselves that same question in the generations that preceded
him, and in every instance the answer would be the same--schools are
forbidden to the slave. The coloured population w