This included the time that I spent as a student
at Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia. During the whole of
the Reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating in
the minds of the coloured people, or, at least, in the minds of a
large part of the race. One of these was the craze for Greek and
Latin learning, and the other was a desire to hold office.
It could not have been expected that a people who had spent
generations in slavery, and before that generations in the
darkest heathenism, could at first form any proper conception of
what an education meant. In every part of the South, during the
Reconstruction period, schools, both day and night, were filled
to overflowing with people of all ages and conditions, some being
as far along in age as sixty and seventy years. The ambition to
secure an education was most praiseworthy and encouraging. The
idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one secured a
little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free from
most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live
without manual labour. There was a further feeling that a
knowledge, however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would
make one a very superior human being, something bordering almost
on the supernatural.
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