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>> Ms. Lee-Alison Friedrich: First, I want to tell you
just a little bit about Booker T. Washington
and I 'm going to share a story with you.
Booker T. Washington was born approximately 1856 in Virginia,
on a plantation as a slave.
He wanted badly to learn to read, which you'll find out
when I share this book with you.
In 1865, when the slaves were freed,
he moved to West Virginia with his family
and he started to work in the house of a wealthy woman
who taught him how to read.
Then, after, he started attending school
and he graduated from school and then taught
his own little school for African American students,
to teach them how to read.
In 1881, he started a school in Tuskegee, Alabama
and first the classes were held in a small church
and eventually this school grew into
a very large school for African Americans.
At this school, people could learn to be farmers,
carpenters, painters, plumbers and blacksmiths
and it grew to be the Tuskegee Institute,
one of the best African American colleges in the country.
Washington advised African Americans to go ahead
by working hard to help one another
and he became a powerful leader in the United States.
He wrote his autobiography, called "Up from Slavery"
and he died in 1915, but in 1940 he was
the first African American to be put on a U.S. postage stamp.
What's so amazing is that this man who started this college in
Tuskegee, Alabama, didn't know how to read and
through his own self-ambition learned how to read.
"More Than Anything Else", by Marie Bradby.
"Before light, while the stars still twinkle,
Papa, my brother John and I leave our cabin
and take the main road out of town headed to work.
The road hugs the bridge between the [unclear dialogue]
and the mountain.
We travel it by lantern.
My stomach rumbles for we had no morning meal,
but it isn't really a meal I want,
though I wouldn't turn one down.
More than anything else I want to learn to read,
but for now I must work from sun up to sun down.
We pack salt in barrels at the [unclear dialogue].
A white mountain of salt rises above Papa's head,
all day long we shovel but it refuses to grow smaller.
We stop only to grab a bite, sweet potatoes
and corn cakes that Papa has brought along in his coat.
As I eat every crum of my meal, I stare at that white mountain.
Salt is heavy and rough.
The shiny, white crystals leave cuts on your hand,
your arms your legs and the soles of your feet.
My arms ache from lifting that shovel,
but I do not think about the pain there, I think about
the hunger still in my head--reading.
I've seen some people, young and old, do it.
I am 9 years old, I know if I had a chance, I could do it too.
I think there's a secret in those books.
In the chill of the evening, I followed Papa
and John back up the road, stopping to catch a frog.
The frog wiggles and slips, but I hold on tight
and let go when I want to .
There is something different about this place
where we live now.
All people are free to go where they want and do what they can,
book learning swims freely around my head
and I hold it as long as I want.
Back in town, coalminers and river men, loggers and coopers,
gather around the corner-- they are as worn out as me,
but full [unclear dialogue].
I see a man reading a newspaper aloud
and all doubt falls away--I have found hope
and it is as brown as me.
I see myself in the man, and as I watch his eyes move across the
paper, it is as if I know what the black marks mean,
as if I am reading, as if everyone is listening to me
and I hold that thought in my hands.
I will work until I am the best reader in the country.
Children will crowd around me and I will teach them to read.
But Papa taps me on the shoulder, 'Come on',
and John tugs at my shirt.
They don't see what I see, they don't see what I can be.
We hurry home.
'Mama, I have to learn to read', I say.
She holds my hand and feels my hunger
racing as fast as my heart.
It's a small book, a blue the color of midnight.
She gives it to me one evening in the corner of our cabin,
pulling it from under the clothes that she washes
and irons to make a little money.
She doesn't say where she got it, she can't read it herself
but she knows this is something called the alphabet.
She thinks it is a singing kind of thing, a song on paper.
After work, even though my shoulders still ache
and my legs are stained with salt, I study my book,
I stare at the marks and I try to imagine their song.
I draw the marks on the dirt floor and try to figure out
the sounds they make, what story their picture tells
but sometimes I feel I'm trying to jump without legs
and my thoughts get slippery and I can't keep up with what
I want to be and how good I will feel when I learn this magic
and how people will look up to me.
I can't catch the tune of what I see.
I get a salt-shoveling pain.
I feel my dreams are slipping away.
I've got to find him--that newspaper man.
I look everywhere.
Finally, I find that brown face of hope.
He tells me the song, the sounds the marks make.
I jump up and down singing, and I shout and laugh
like when I was baptized in the creek.
I have jumped into another world, I am saved!
But I have to know more.
'Tell me more', I said.
'What's your name?', he asks.
'Booker', I say and he takes the sound of my name
and draws it on the ground.
I linger over that picture, I know I can hold onto it forever.
[audience applause.]
>> Dr. Norman Greer: Great job [unclear dialogue].
Now we have a biographical sketch of Harriet Tubman.
Jackie Patterson.
>>Ms. Jackie Patterson: I don't have any books
to show, but I have this [unclear dialogue].
[audience laughter.]
Harriet Tubman was born in about 1820 in Maryland.
She was 1 of 11 children, her parents were slaves.
By the time she was five years old, Harriet was working
on the plantation as a field hand and a servant.
When she was a teenager, her master hit her on the head with
a heavy object as she tried to stop him from
catching a runaway slave.
I think it was actually a brick.
I'm pretty sure it was a brick.
The injury caused her to [unclear dialogue].
When Harriet was 22, she married a man named John Tubman.
Four years later, Harriet decided to escape from slavery.
He refused to go with her, so she ran away by herself
and traveled up north where she joined a group of people called
abolitionists who were looking to do away with slavery.
Harriet became a conductor of the Underground Railroad,
helping runaway slaves find safe places to hide.
Harriet made 19 trips down south and brought back 300 slaves,
including her children, her brothers and their families,
and her aging parents.
Some slaveholders offered $40,000 reward for her capture,
but she was never caught.
During the Civil War, Harriet was a spy, a nurse and a scout.
When the war was over, she settled down on a small farm
that she had bought in Alabama.
Oh sorry, not Alabama--Auburn, New York.
Alabama would be slavery so...
[audience laughter.]
She became a strong supporter of women's rights
and helped establish a home for poor
and elderly African Americans.
After Harriet died of pneumonia in 1913, residents of Auburn
put up a plaque in her honor in the town square.
A postage stamp with her picture was issued February 1978,
the first to feature an African American.
>> Mr. Demarius Howard: ♪ "Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.
You see I sat in the water, and the water was cold.
God's gonna trouble the water.
You see it chilled my body, but it didn't chill my soul.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Stepped in the water, wanting to pray.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Chilled my body, but didn't chill my soul.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water."
[applause].