Up from Slavery Study Guide

Booker T. Washington is not certain of the date or location of his birth, though he believes he was born near a post office called Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia. He doesn't know his father but says there were rumors that he was a white man from a nearby plantation. Washington spent his early years - from his birth in 1858 or 1859 until the end of the Civil War in 1865 - as a slave on that plantation with his mother, his brother John and his sister Amanda. He is known then only as Booker, though his mother named him Booker Taliaferro. It isn't until he has the opportunity to go to school that he selects Washington as his surname. (read more)