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A Slave Among Slaves

• Booker T. Washington believes that he was born near a post office in Franklin County, Virginia.

• He doesn't know his father but thinks he was a white man.

• Until the end of the Civil War, Booker, his mother Jane, his brother John, and his sister Amanda are slaves on a plantation.

• As a child, his name is Booker Taliaferro.
• Living in a small cabin that also serves as the plantation's kitchen, Booker spends most of his time working as a child.

• One of his childhood jobs is carrying corn to the mill for grinding.

• When the Emancipation Proclamation is read to slaves, they are freed immediately.

• The former slaves first celebrate and then wonder what they'll do with their lives and where they'll live.

• Booker notes that blacks and whites were equally unprepared for freedom.

Boyhood Days

• Upon gaining their freedom, the former slaves...

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