Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 152
24.03.2006
successful struggle with life's sternest realities. We will give his story in his own
language. Bear
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in mind that this is the language, as taken down verbatim by a stenographer at
the time, of a totally unschooled ex-slave. He said: "Now I want to say I went to
Jacksonville nineteen years ago with the magnificent sum of a dollar and ten
cents in my pocket. (Laughter.) I also had an extra suit of underclothing in a
paper bag; that was all the baggage I had as a boarder. (Laughter.) I was also
arrested as a tramp for having on a straw hat in the winter time. (Hearty
laughter.) And I say all this especially to you young men who are present here
to-night, for so many of our young men seem to think that they can't start or
succeed in business unless somebody shoves them off the bank into the water of
opportunity and makes them swim for themselves; I simply want to say this to
you young men, I started with $1.10 and one extra suit of underclothing in a
paper bag--(laughter)--and to-day I pay more taxes than any Negro in Florida.
(Prolonged applause.) I have had all sorts of struggles and difficulties to contend
with, but you can't get away from it--if you get anything in this United States of
America now, you have got to work for it. (Hearty applause.) The white people
all over this country have 'weaned the Negro.' (Laughter and applause.) Dr.
Washington has been going all over this country boasting about what you could
do and what our race has done, and the white man is just quietly and gently and
in every way telling us: 'Go thou and do what Dr. Washington said you could
do.' (Prolonged laughter and applause.)
"When I began, I commenced working for a railroad
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company; I had a splendid job--washing cars for a dollar and five cents a day; I
got $8.40 from the railroad every eight days. After working for a month and a
half I saved enough money to send back and bring my wife from Charleston,
South Carolina, to Jacksonville. Both of us went to work; we opened a little
boarding-house; she ran that, and when my $1.05 a day enabled me to save as
much as one hundred dollars, I quit that job and began to bustle for myself. I
told the white man I was working under: 'You don't know that a Negro with
$100 in cash is a rare thing among my people. I'm going to strike out and see
what I can do by myself.' I made up my mind that if all of the big Negroes that I
had heard of, read about, and talked with, if they could get honor and