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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