This is the inspiring story of a modern Moses who led his people out of bondage. 

Born a slave, suffering the worst poverty, working in fields and mines, Booker T. Washington struggled for an education. In 1872 at the age of fifteen, with nickles and dimes contributed by neighbors and friends, he went to Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute where he was accepted as a student. After graduation and a few years of teaching, he decided to study for the ministry, but he realized the best way he could serve his people, who were new to freedom and needed the tools of freedom, was to teach them to work as free people. So he became an instructor at Hampton Institute. 

At twenty-three he was commissioned to found a normal and industrial school in Tuskegee, Alabama, and here his life of dedication really began. Fighting debt all the way, Tuskegee Institute and Booker T. Washington produced teachers, carpenters, tinsmiths, farmers. Today Tuskegee Institute is one of the most important colleges in the South, with an enrollment of thousands of students. 

This is the story of a man to whom high honors always came as a surprise-honorary Harvard degrees-the famous  "Teddy Roosevelt Dinner"-receptions by Queen Victoria and the King of Denmark-yet Booker Taliaferro Washington was uneasy amidst formality. He died among the red brick building of Tuskegee Institute which he had helped to build, brick by brick. 

Shirley Graham once again proves her skill as a biographer in this exciting and inspiring story of a dedicated man. 

From the dust jacket