remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the
colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big
house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering,
talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda
read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were
all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were
very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven--a
heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.

Most of them began to wander--they thought they had to leave their old
quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as
usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.

But in a little while her husband arrived--a colored man to whom she had
been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he
came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started
away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to
work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.

It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their
belongings in bundles. They had no horses--no cows--no wagon--they
walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it
rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the friendly side of a
straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried,
with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind
colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people
are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be
generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way,
at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the
wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum--and there was a genuine banquet,
where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.

Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the
little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were
the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid
in real money.

Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little
Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who
owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This
was a brand-new experience--and no doubt they bought a few things they
did not need, for prices and v