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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