I recall that I looked
forward with an anxious appetite to the "teacher's day" at our
little cabin.
This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the
first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has
ever occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few
people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any
exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race
showed for an education. As I have stated, it was a whole race
trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to
make the attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could
be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools
as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try to
learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view
men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would
often be found in the night-school. Some day-schools were formed
soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the
Sunday-school was the spelling-book. Day-school, night-school,
Sunday-school, were always crowded, and often many had to be
turned away for want of room.
The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley, however, brought
to me one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced.
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