Booker T. Washington’s Bridge Forward (Told By His Great-Granddaughter)

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Just bring your own comfy sweater. Find your cheer on the Starbucks app today. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. As the great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, the former slave turned famous educator and founder of Tuskegee University, Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush has been influenced by her great grandfather's rise above slavery, his relentless stand on inner strength and his principles on personal development. Here she is to tell her story as well as her great grandfather's.

Let's take a listen. For as long as I can remember, I knew that Booker T. Washington was my great grandfather. I didn't learn about the significance of what it meant to be in his bloodline until I was an adult and as a result of that, like so many of our children today, I spent my childhood, my teenage years and a lot of my young adult years looking for myself in all the wrong places. My mother, although she was the granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, she was born and raised across the street from Tuskegee.

It was instituted at the time. Today it's Tuskegee University, but she rarely talked about it and she never knew her grandfather because she was born four years after he died in 1915. She was born in 1919, but I heard from others that she and her parents and her three younger sisters were all treated like royalty growing up there where it all happened. My mother's father was Ernest Davidson Washington and he was the last born of Booker T. Washington's three children. I actually learned more about what it was like growing up in Tuskegee from hearing Lionel Richie speak about it on an episode of Oprah Winfrey's masterclass program several years ago. He grew up right next door to my mom. My mother grew up with his mother and they lived right across the street from the campus and he said on this episode, living there was like being in a protective bubble, raised by a community and surrounded by Black professionals away from the discrimination and racism that he would later face and discover outside of Tuskegee.

I believe he said it was in Montgomery Alabama when he started to travel with the Commodores, but before that it was foreign to him. So listening to him speak so proudly about Tuskegee was so moving. Today my mom is buried on the campus of Tuskegee University along with Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver and other prominent African Americans including her parents and I believe two or maybe three previous Tuskegee University presidents. And because she's passed away I can only speculate about the reason she didn't talk much about her lineage and I believe there were actually a combination of reasons that she didn't talk about it. One was that she was overwhelmed as a single parent.

At times my mom held down two full-time jobs just trying to make ends meet. And another reason could have been that when I grew up in the 60s in North Oakland we were just a stone literally a stone's throw away from where Hughie Newton and the Black Panther Party began. And at that time there was little tolerance for the reconciliation stand that Booker T. Washington took from the late 1800s until he died in 1915. He believed it was more important to gain what we needed to get ahead in terms of economics and industry. He determined the best way to do that was to get along with white people rather than to fight against them. He was led, always led by his Christian values, and he talked about the Bible and how he read it every single day and how they depended on that as slaves. That's where their hope and their faith came from. And he said and up from slavery his autobiography that he woke up every morning to the fervent prayers of his mother on her knees praying for their freedom. And he said once, he said, I will never allow any man to drag me down so low as to make me hate him. That definitely comes from the Christian values that he had in his heart. And he also said it's important in right that all privileges of law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these rights and privileges.

In other words, what use was it to have privileges if we weren't properly prepared on how to use them? So because of this stance that Booker T. Washington took, he was often referred to as an Uncle Tom or a sellout. And I think that hurt my mother. That was her grandfather. Unfortunately, at the time, those voices overshadowed the voices of those who really knew all that Washington accomplished for black Americans. And I could talk about that for hours of the things that I've learned since learning more about my great grandfather.

And in a book entitled Christian Business Legends, they cited by 1905 Tuskegee turned out more self-made millionaires than Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined. And one final reason my mom may have been quiet about her lineage was that my mom was just very modest. Like her grandfather, she just believed that people pulled themselves up on their own hard work and through their own merits. So she never dropped names. She never boasted about anything. That was just her nature. And now my father, on the other hand, and we spent my brother and I, James, we spent every weekend with my father.

They were divorced since as young as I can remember, about five years old. But we spent, he'd always lived nearby. We spent every weekend with him. And he would, in a loud and proud voice, introduce us to any and everybody as descendants of Booker T. Washington. But he never explained why he was so excited. And you're listening to Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush tell the story of her great grandfather, but also of her own family. I will explain why he was so excited. Family.

I will never allow a man to drag me so low that I hate him. When we come back, more of the story of Booker T. Washington is told by his great granddaughter here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our americanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little give a lot.

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5G that's ready right now. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush. And she's the great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington.

Let's pick up where she last left off. So whenever he introduced me and my brother, we would just get embarrassed. And that was the only thing I didn't adore about my father. Other than that, I just really adored being with my father. My mom was the one who made us do our homework, eat our vegetables. But at my dad's house, it was just free getting.

We could do whatever we wanted to do. And I'll talk a little bit about why that was in a second. But when I was nine years old, I remember him introducing us to an elderly stranger who we just happened to be passing by on the sidewalk. And in his usual loud voice, he said, these are Booker T. Washington's great grandchildren. And while I cringed, the man looked down at me and he said in a really kind voice, he said, don't be embarrassed. It's an honor to know you and to know that his descendants still exist. But still, I didn't understand why.

So for a long time in my life, I would just write my family lineage off as just an accident of birth. I didn't know then, but I learned much later in my life that my dad was so loud and boisterous because on the weekends he was usually intoxicated. As I reflect back on my childhood, I my father only seemed happy when he was drinking. And when he wasn't drinking, which was during the week because he had to go to work, he was usually distant or angry. And by the time I was 11, he decided to suddenly take off, leave town for a better life that didn't include me or my brother. And after that, not only did I rarely see or hear from him anymore, but I rarely heard about our relationship to Booker T. Washington. I believe my dad's problems started long before I was born.

In fact, I know they did. And it probably was around the time he graduated from Texas Southern University Law School because he was never able to pass the state bar exam. My mother would often joke and say that he would never pass that bar because he could never pass a bar.

But he contended that it was the discrimination that he faced when he graduated in 1938. But as a little girl, none of that mattered to me. All I knew is that my father was gone. And unfortunately, the next time I would see him, I was an adult. Meanwhile, in my teen years with my mother working two jobs and my father gone, I spent a lot of time unsupervised.

And again, looking for myself in all the wrong places. And the year I turned 16, while my friends were planning sweet 16 parties, I was preparing for the birth of my son. Ironically, my birthday falls on February 16.

My son's was born on September 16. And so while that number 16 should have represented life for me, it didn't. Instead, it represented huge amounts of shame, guilt, embarrassment. And that came from the harsh stares, the judgment, and the criticism that came from friends, family, and even strangers who walked by and saw that I was much too young to be pushing a baby around in a stroller.

And so for a long time in my life, every time I heard the number 16, thoughts of guilt, shame, and embarrassment will conjure up in my head. By the time I was 17, I was a single mom on welfare with a one-year-old child. I lived on my own, raising him alone in a dangerous high crime drug infested housing project on 85th Avenue and way deep in East Oakland. And that was way on the other side of my high school.

I went to high school in North Oakland. But the one thing that I remember, and the only thing I remember, my parents ever agreeing about was the importance of education. So I would get up early every morning. I would get me and my son dressed, catch two buses to school, drop him off at daycare, which was across the street from the school, and I'd rush to class.

And against overwhelming odds, in a city that was deemed a dropout factory by a Harvard study, citing that 48 percent of the freshmen in the Oakland Public School District end up dropping out. But I'm proud to say I managed to graduate six months ahead of my class, having the grades and more than enough credits to do so. And while I still don't completely understand how I was able to accomplish all that without anyone encouraging me or urging me on, without any adult role model, positive role model around, I do know that I was determined to have a better life. And I now know that it probably didn't hurt that God placed me in a lineage where I had Booker T. Washington's blood running through my veins.

And for me, that gives life to Romans 828, that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Booker T. Washington traveled nearly 500 miles, mostly by foot, to gain his formal education. From Hampton, Hampton Institute, today Hampton University. And he was 16 when he went there, and he graduated three years later with honors. And just seven years earlier than that, he was a slave, and one of his slave duties was carrying the master's children's books as he walked behind them to school. And after he went inside, he would hang around on the outside of the schoolhouse to listen to what the teacher was teaching. But he'd run away before getting caught because at the time a slave learning to read or write was a crime, and it was a crime that could be punished by death.

But he knew then what's still true today, that knowledge was power. And he said it felt like getting into a schoolhouse would be like arriving in paradise. So for me, although today the schools could use lots of improvement, I think the situation is a lot better now than it was when he was able to go to school.

And if he was able to use his education to build a school that still stands today, and it produces graduates that come back into our communities as leaders for the next generation, I think that we can continue to make strides to make them better, but we can make more strides in our own lives as we push to make our schools better. For a long time in my life, I missed it. I was running on fumes.

I was just trying to survive. And it took nearly 20 years from the time that I graduated from high school to realize that there was more to this light. It happened when I went to the South for the first time in my life, and I arrived on the campus of Tuskegee University. And that was the school that my grandfather opened on July 4, 1881, 16 years after the end of slavery. And we went there for our very first Booker T. Washington family reunion. When we first stepped foot on campus, there were students, faculty, community leaders, reporters, there were writers and journalists, and they were all there to welcome us. Some were awestruck that we were still alive.

And like the older gentleman said, and I was awestruck that they cared so much. They were inspired simply by our presence. And they asked us for autographs and interviews. They asked to take pictures with us. Some just wanted to rub shoulders and elbows and touch us.

And some just wanted a chance to talk and get to know us. My presence was important to them. And up to that point, I believe my life was pretty simple and ordinary or less than ordinary.

And it wasn't, it was without much purpose. Because I grew up not knowing what all of these people who surrounded me knew about my great grandfather and about my history. And you're listening to Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush tell the story of her life, her father's life and of course, her great grandfather, Booker T. Washington, the book, rising up from the blood, a legacy reclaimed a bridge forward. And what a story Sarah is telling about her own father, most importantly, who had problems of his own and abandon his family. And at the age of 16, like so many girls without fathers, he soon found herself a mother. It turns out Booker T. Washington, her great granddad was 16 when he traveled 500 miles to go to school. And that, of course, was just years before he was a slave.

When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush and her great grandfather Booker T. Washington here on Our American Stories. Everything is more expensive these days with inflation rising Medicare beneficiaries living on a fixed income are concerned about increasing costs. Make your Medicare dollars go further by picking the right plan. Start by looking for a plan that gives you more. For example, many Medicare Advantage plans include dental, vision and hearing benefits while original Medicare doesn't. Learn more about plan costs beyond premiums such as deductibles, copays and drug coverage. Find that right plan for you.

Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com. When the world gets in the way of your music, try the new Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2, next gen earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears. They use exclusive Bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you, delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love. Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2, sound shape to you. To learn more, visit Bose.com.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Strickland, host of The Restless Ones. Join me as I sit down for in-depth discussions with the leaders at the intersection of technology and business. Leaders like Danny Miles, Chief Technology Officer of Under Armour. Everybody wants that page sub second, especially on a mobile device. That's where the traffic lives. That's where people are connected all day. And I think in a fitness realm, that's what you're really looking to do.

People aren't carrying their laptop or their desktop to the gym. And so whether you're on a track, the opportunity to leverage that mobile device is still extremely important. It's got to be performant. It's got to be reliable.

It's got to work every single time and it's got to work wherever you are. The Restless Ones is now available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Presented by T-Mobile for Business, 5G that's ready right now. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Booker T. Washington and equally important the story of his great granddaughter. And that would be Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush. We just heard how Sarah was reintroduced to her proud lineage while visiting the university her great grandfather built with his own hands. Tuskegee, the receptions he experienced while it was overwhelming.

Let's return to Sarah. So this experience brought back again and brought back the memories of walking on the sidewalk that day with my father when the elderly gentleman said it's an honor to know you. It was all beginning to make sense. And it was at this reunion that I began to understand and my interest and enthusiasm about my great grandfather was ignited. And it was there that I learned how important his work was.

I was inspired by so much and I hear from people who learned that I'm the great granddaughter. I hear from them about you know how they may have thought one way about Booker T. Washington and they visited that campus or they read up from slavery and their whole view changed and that was the experience that I had from that trip. And what I was most struck by most fascinated by were the original buildings that some of them still stand today and these buildings were built by hand brick by brick by Booker T. Washington and his students, African-American ancestors, all former slaves using bricks that they made. And these bricks were of such superior quality that people came from miles around to purchase them and there are buildings that are still standing in the south today that are made from these very bricks. And he put the money from the sale of these bricks back into the school giving his students lessons in business and finance economics and industry and that was his plan all along.

And there is a story of perseverance that can be found in his autobiography Up from Slavery of his determination never to give up in his quest for making these bricks because it got down to his last watch that he had to pawn because he spent all the money and the kiln wasn't working but he while his students may have been getting frustrated he refused to give up. So after I returned home from the reunion I set out to learn everything I could about my history and my great grandfather and that's when I read Up from Slavery for the first time and I studied and I did research. I read biographies about him and I asked lots of questions. I began looking at my family tree and I discovered that I have 15 cousins who are also the great grandchildren of Booker T. Washington and in that birth order I'm the last born. So I thought about it and I'm like that makes me the 16th of 16 great grandchildren of Booker T. Washington and it hit me suddenly that that number 16 which had always been a reminder of shame and guilt and embarrassment it began to take on a whole new meaning and I realized then that this was no accident because God doesn't make mistakes.

16 represents my birthday, my son's birthday, the age of Washington when he traveled to Hampton, the years that pass between the end of slavery and the beginning of Tuskegee Institute and it represents my place in the birth order and the completion of the fourth generation of Booker T. Washington. My whole life has changed since that time in Tuskegee and making the connection to my lineage and that's why I do what I do today in terms of being an inspirational speaker and writer because I believe these messages of resilience and perseverance can go a long way in cultivating hope and the strength necessary for us to pick up where our ancestors left off. So my great grandfather Booker T. Washington he was a former slave turned famous educator and the founder of Tuskegee University and he was born into slavery. The only parent or fore-parent that he knew was his mother Jane and it was and that's the only name that he knew her by and he credits her for his determination and his resilience. He didn't know because slaves were torn apart from their families he didn't know anybody else he didn't know aunts or uncles or grandparents and so his mom she was the cook for on the plantation and she would sneak food for them and and they lived in a one-room cabin with a dirt floor they slept on the floor and that's when he would wake up to the fervent prayers of his mother every morning praying for their freedom. He suspects because he never knew his father that he was a white man who lived on a nearby plantation. He always vowed that because he had no lineage himself or he had no ancestors that he knew that he would leave a record for his children and his his grandchildren and great grandchildren that he hoped would make them proud which it absolutely worked for me and for several of my my family members. So when they were fine he was nine years old when freedom came to them and they immediately moved to West Virginia where his stepfather was and he had to work in the salt furnaces and the coal mines in order to help make ends meet for the family.

His mom knew his desire to go to school and so she bought him a dictionary that helped him teach himself the ABC's but he also got a job during the day with Viola Ruffner and she was the wife of a Quaker and she was a strict disciplinarian so she's a white woman and she couldn't keep any of her staff who were also former slaves because she was so strict but Booker G Washington he followed everything she asked to a tee and so she is really impressed with him with his cleanliness she taught him cleanliness how to clean a room how to clean up himself how to look straight how to sit up straight how to talk how to speak and she was really impressed with his desire to follow these instructions and so she actually encouraged him to get his education from Hampton Institute which was one of the only schools that was teaching former slaves but she would also teach him on her when he was done doing his work she would teach him how to read and so when he got to Hampton he walked nearly the whole way because he got kicked off of trains he had to sleep under sidewalks and it was it was nearly 500 miles and when he got there his entrance exam was to clean a recital room so the teacher left while he did that and when she came back she took her handkerchief and she went over the room the floors the walls and she couldn't find a speck of dirt and she told him you're accepted and he credits Viola Ruffner for teaching him how to clean a room in that way and I think the way Booker T Washington looked at things a little bit different like some people would hear that and they would just be appalled like how dare she would but his mindset was different and so he would look at more in a positive light that it's because of this that I'm here and now I will be able to do this which he proved well that he was able to take all of these things adversity and blessings and turn them over tenfold to his people and you've been listening to Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush tell her story and also the story of her great grandfather who she discovers after a family reunion trip to Tuskegee and that one gentleman who said it's an honor to know you and that lit a fire in Sarah to learn more about her great grandfather and in the end herself when we come back more of the remarkable story of Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush and her great grandfather Booker T Washington here on Our American Story Everything is more expensive these days. With inflation rising, Medicare beneficiaries living on a fixed income are concerned about increasing costs. Make your Medicare dollars go further by picking the right plan. Start by looking for a plan that gives you more. For example, many Medicare Advantage plans include dental, vision, and hearing benefits while original Medicare doesn't. Learn more about your plan costs beyond premiums such as deductibles, co-pays, and drug coverage.

Find that right plan for you. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com When the world gets in the way of your music, try the new Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2. Next Gen Earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears. They use exclusive Bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you, delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love. Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2. Sound shape to you.

To learn more, visit Bose.com. All day. And I think in a fitness realm, that's what you're really looking to do. People aren't carrying their laptop or their desktop to the gym. And so whether you're on a track, the opportunity to leverage that mobile device is still extremely important. It's got to be performant. It's got to be reliable. It's got to work every single time. And it's got to work wherever you are.

The Restless Ones is now available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Presented by T-Mobile for Business, 5G that's ready right now. And we continue here with our American stories and with Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush telling the story of her own life, her family's life, and the life of her great grandfather, Booker T. Washington. Let's pick up where we last saw the story of her own life. So, Booker T. Washington's philosophy was there's a statue actually on the front of the campus. It's a pretty famous statue. It's called Lifting the Veil of Ignorance. And he's lifting the veil from a slave's eyes.

And so many people come from miles around from all over the world and they take pictures in front of the statue lifting the veil. And what he did in lifting the veil of ignorance is he lifted the veil of ignorance. He did that by personal responsibility. Some of the philosophies that Booker T. Washington stood for were character building, self-reliance, excellence, economics and wealth, Christianity, determination, and education of the head, hand, and the heart.

And the head stood for book smarts or academics. The hand was hard work and the heart was giving back. And service to others. Some people think that he just wanted blacks to continue to be slaves, which is so far from the truth. He wanted them to take what they learned in slavery and he wanted them to perfect it, which is an example of the bricks in the buildings that still stand on the campus. So personal responsibility kept moral character building. His students had to, every morning they had to pray.

They prayed morning, noon, and night. He took that in. He took it from slavery.

He knew that that's what was going to work. It taught them discipline. He was big on discipline. When he first got to Tuskegee, he traveled outside of the area where the school was going to open and he went into the rural country districts because he wanted to discover the life of the people and what their needs were. And what he found, it surprised even him.

He found people, like five people living in one room shacks and he found children outside that were completely naked and the ones who had on clothing, some had only one piece and it was so filthy he said it didn't even resemble cloth. And so he said he spent the night with many of these families and they always found room for him even though they didn't have room for themselves because they were anxious to get an education and improve their lives. But one thing he saw was that they would share one fork among them when they ate at the table in the evening.

There'd be one fork among maybe a family of five. But he saw an expensive clock on a mantel or he saw a piano in someone's house and he's like how can they afford these material items and they can't even take care of themselves. And so he knew that was something that he would have to work on with them. And so when the school was to open and when he accepted students and students were accepted into the school, they felt like they weren't going to have to do any more hard work that this was their ticket to freedom, to real freedom. But he had different plans and so when he told them that they were going to build their own buildings and they were going to grow their own food and they were going to raise farm animals so that they would have food and dairy, they protested loudly.

But when he picked up the first axe and he led the way through the forest of trees, if you can imagine in the South all the trees and he began to cut down the trees, they willingly began to follow quietly and willingly began to follow. And many times when I tell people that I, or when people learn that I'm the great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, especially if I'm speaking somewhere where there's a question and answer period, I can hear from their questions that they're confusing him with either George Washington Carver, maybe even George Washington. Sometimes Debbie E.B. Du Bois, who was his greatest critic. And so I always realized then that we need to learn our history, we need to know our history and I know for me that learning about my history certainly changed my life. So while my mother and her three sisters, they didn't know Booker T. Washington because he died four years before my mom, the oldest, was born. They did know George Washington Carver, who was actually my aunt Edith's godfather. Booker T. Washington invited him to be the head of the agricultural department.

And he said, I can't pay you much, but I can give you room and board. And all George Washington Carver wanted to do was make a difference for his people. He was also born a slave. And so many people think that when they find out I'm the great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, that it's George Washington Carver and they'll say, oh, he invented the peanut.

And I tell them no, I think God invented the peanut, but he found hundreds of uses for the peanut. And so the things that he was able to do, the discoveries he made through science, it was said that George Washington Carver could have been a multi-millionaire or a millionaire if he'd done something other than lead the agricultural department at Tuskegee. But it was his choice to stay there. And he stayed there until his passing and he left every penny that he had, which I can't remember how much it was.

It was in the tens of thousands, I believe. He left all of that to Tuskegee. So Booker T. Washington and W. E. B.

Du Bois, something some people don't know is that they were actually friends before they publicly split. There was never really a debate, but they publicly split because his most important project was getting Tuskegee off the ground. He made friends with white people such as Andrew Carnegie, Teddy Roosevelt. He was the first black invited to dine at the White House. There was George Eastman of Eastman Kodak, Julius Rosenwald, who was the president of Sears Roebuck. And Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington actually partnered and Julius Rosenwald funded the Rosenwald schools in the South.

There were over 5,000 schools that were built for African Americans. And so Booker T. Washington, in order to get those things done, he knew he had to be respectful and he had to look the part and dress the part himself. And he had to respect himself and carry himself in that manner in order to get the attention that he needed for these schools. He figured that all rights and privileges of law should be ours, but it's more important that we be prepared. He knew that in order to get prepared, that was the first order of the day.

And next, you know, we would gain the respect of the people. The difference between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois was that W. E. B.

Du Bois was more for the talented 10th. I was at a conference or I was speaking on a panel in Buffalo, New York for the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement. And the Niagara Movement was a precursor to the NAACP and it was started by Du Bois. And it was to combat a lot of Booker T. Washington's ideas. And on this panel, there were professors and it was the first time I was publicly speaking. And we were in Buffalo where Du Bois started the Niagara Movement. So people were on his side and the moderator even sat in on the panel, which was unheard of.

I haven't seen anything like it since. And they were all on the side of Du Bois and they wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. And one person who was actually a well-known writer and a movie producer, he said, I'm tired of this talk about Booker T. Washington. All he wanted us to do was be slaves. And so when I walked off the stage, there was a man who the reporters were flocking around the night before the reception and he looked at me and he said, those people are idiots. And then I later found out that he was a famous poet Ishmael Reed.

And he lived for a time in Buffalo and he's a professor, might be a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley here where I am. Yes, Booker T. Washington was more about hard work. We can do this. We can clean up ourselves.

There is work that we need to do in order to get where we need to go to gain the mutual respect and to get ahead. And a terrific job on the production and editing by Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Sarah Washington O'Neill Rush. Her book, Rising Up from the Blood, a legacy reclaimed a bridge forward. And what a story she told about Booker T. Washington.

It is not told enough in our schools. And he wanted to do something simple with Tuskegee. And that was create a great place for young African Americans. Young recently turned free people from slaves into independent and self-reliant people. And of course, that story of Booker T. Washington and Du Bois. Du Bois trying to get to the talented 10th, populate the universities and change mindsets. And here was Booker T. Washington toiling in communities trying to build up his own people to become independent and free people. The story of Booker T. Washington. The story of his great granddaughter and his family.

And so much more here on Our American Stories. And you can even listen to your favorite music with iHeartRadio right on your TV. This Sam's Club exclusive runs from November 5th to the 9th. So head to sam'sclub.com today. Visit fredolayscore.com and pass the ball now. No purchase necessary. Open to legal residence at 50 USDC 18 plus grand prize entry deadline. 11 10 22 entries received after 11 10 22 are only eligible for secondary prizes.

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