Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.
After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few
months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a
vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of
the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General
Ruffner, was a “Yankee” woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a
reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her
servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of
them remained with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with
the same excuse: she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would
rather try Mrs. Ruffner’s house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my
mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary
of $5 per month.
I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner’s severity that I was almost
afraid to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had
not lived with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand
her. I soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything
kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and
systematically, and that at the bottom of everything she wanted
absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod;
every door, every fence, must be kept in repair.
I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to
Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate,
I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons
that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as
any education I have ever gotten anywhere else. Even to this day I
never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that
I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I
do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that I do not want to
put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to
paint or whitewash it, or a button off one’s clothes, or a grease-spot
on them or on a floor, that I do not want to call attention to it.
From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my
best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so
implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave
me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a
portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at
night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to
teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all
my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that I
began to get together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box,
knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting
into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called
it my “library.”
Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner’s I did not give up the idea
of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to
make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no
definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it
would cost to go there. I do not think that any one thoroughly
sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my
mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out
on a “wild-goose chase.” At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent
from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had
earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the
family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very
little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My
brother John helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a
great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn
much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the
household expenses.
Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with
my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older
coloured people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of
their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time
when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a
boarding-school. Some of these older people would give me a nickel,
others a quarter, or a handkerchief.
Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a
small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing I could
get. My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I
hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more
sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there
were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with
eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the
remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches.
The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had
not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. One
experience I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the
mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashion stage-coach, when,
late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common,
unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except myself
were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that the little hotel existed
for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the
stage-coach. The difference that the colour of one’s skin would make I
had not thought anything about. After all the other passengers had been
shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I shyly presented myself
before the man at the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my
pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had hoped in some way
to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season
in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get
indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any money,
the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of
providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in
finding out what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to
keep warm by walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul
was so bent upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish
any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper.
By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and
dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city, and
this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was
completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place,
and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied
at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was
what I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the
streets. In doing this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken
and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most
tempting appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have
promised all that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten
hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not
get either of these, nor anything else to eat.
I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so
exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was
everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme
physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board
sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I
was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the
sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of
clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet
over my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I
was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had had
sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my
surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship
seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. I went at once to the
vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in
order to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be
kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my
breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about
the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.
My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
could continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad
to do. I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After
buying food with the small wages I received there was not much left to
add on the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to
economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a
reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave
me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the
coloured citizens of Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at
which there must have been two thousand people present. This reception
was held not far from the spot where I slept the first night I spent in
the city, and I must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk
that first gave me shelter than upon the recognition, agreeable and
cordial as it was.
When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a
surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me
it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large,
three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all
that I had undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who
gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence
the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths,
they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed
to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen.
The sight of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of
existence had now begun—that life would now have a new meaning. I felt
that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle
prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to
accomplish the most good in the world.
As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton
Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for an assignment
to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and a
change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable
impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in
her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I
could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless
loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither
did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and
to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the