Up From slavery

Although Booker himself was unsure of his birth date it has been determined now that he was born on April 5 1856 near Hale’s Ford Virginia on the Burroughs farm. . He was born into slavery as his mother was a slave and that made him the property of the same owner. After Emancipation in 1865 he had to help his poverty-stricken parents by working in the salt mines and the coalmines of West Virginia. He wanted to go to school so badly that at the age of 16 he walked over two hundred miles to attend school at the Hampton Institute in Hampton Virginia. He became a teacher because he was convinced that only through education could his race rise up from the burdens of slavery. He first taught in his hometown then at the Hampton Institute and finally at the Tuskegee Institute which he himself founded.. Because he had to travel throughout the country in search of funding for the Institute he soon gained fame as an important speaker for his race. His famous speech at the Atlanta Exposition brought the attention of the white race to his belief that Negroes could actually raise themselves up through hard work and education.. He was often encouraged to run for office but always turned down the suggestion because he wanted to devote his life to the field of education. He died at the age of 59 on November 14 1915 in Tuskegee.