Men of Faith: Success

“I have learned that success
is to be measured not so much
by the position that one has reached in life
as by the obstacles which he has overcome
while trying to succeed.”

— Booker T. Washington
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Even as a child who had been born a slave, Booker T. Washington always had a great thirst for knowledge. When the slaves were freed, he worked as hard as he could while a young boy and saved all his money to get an education. Then he walked alone for days to a school that he had heard about for black children, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, and worked his way in. After many years of sacrifice and a great deal of hardships, he graduated from this school. At the encouragement of the leader at this school, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Washington became a teacher and started another school for black children and adults called the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. His emphasis was not just book learning, but also learning skills to work with your hands. He taught cleanliness, complete order, simplicity, helping others, and improving spirituality. This is one of his quotes:

While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational, but it is thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the students is not neglected.

— Booker T. Washington
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Reading the Bible

Booker T. Washington believed in the importance of reading the Bible every day. He reverenced the Bible, which he called the “the book of all books.”

As a rule a person should get into the habit of reading his Bible. You never read in history of any great man whose influence has been lasting, who has not been a reader of the Bible. Take Abraham Lincoln and Gladstone. Their lives show that they have been readers of the Bible. If you wish to properly direct your mind and necessarily your lives, begin by reading the book of all books. Read your Bible every day, and you will find how healthily you will grow.

— Booker T. Washington
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No Racial Prejudice

Booker T. Washington taught by his example to love all people as God loves them. He treated all white people, all black people, and people of all races with equal respect and dignity. He didn’t hold grudges towards people who mistreated him; he chose to forgive them instead.

It is now long ago that I . . . resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. With God’s help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race. . . . I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

— Booker T. Washington
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Education

Listening to Booker T. Washington’s books on audible have given me much more gratitude for the importance of education, and I now feel inspired to improve my own life in many ways. I also have a greater understanding and empathy for the trials and tribulations the freed slaves had to endure. I feel much more compassion for their many struggles throughout history. This is one of his many quotes about education:

“I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.”

— Booker T. Washington
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