"UP FROM SLAVERY" - читать интересную книгу автора (Washington Booker T)

necessary for the support of the institution. Much of what I have
said has been written on board trains, or at hotels or railroad
stations while I have been waiting for trains, or during the moments
that I could spare from my work while at Tuskegee. Without the
painstaking and generous assistance of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I
could not have succeeded in any satisfactory degree.




UP FROM SLAVERY


CHAPTER I

A SLAVE AMONG SLAVES


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 cross-roads
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 slave ship
while being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful
in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon
the history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a
half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery not very much
attention was given to family history and family records -- that is,
black family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention
of a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to
the slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of
a new horse or cow. Of my father I know even less than of my mother.
I do not even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that
he was a white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations.
Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me
or providing in any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial