I perused the aisles of the Alameda Antique Fair search­ing for the “dia­mond in the rough”. When I go to antique fairs, I don’t always know what that “dia­mond” is, until I see it. And that’s exactly how it was when I came across an old beat up brown book called Up From Slav­ery, an auto­bi­og­ra­phy by Booker T. Wash­ing­ton. I am no his­tory buff, but the name sounded famil­iar and it had that old mys­te­ri­ous look about it that made me so curi­ous to find out what was inside the old crip­pling pages barely hang­ing on to the spine. I had no idea that this book truly would be my “dia­mond in the rough”.

I could go on and on about all of the things this book has opened me up to, but I wanted to share just one sec­tion with you today. It truly encour­aged me in my busi­ness, but the thing I love about most things I learn in regards to my busi­ness — they can usu­ally be applied to other areas of life. So if you are out there start­ing your own busi­ness like us and often find your­self dis­cour­aged, I hope you find this inspir­ing. How­ever, if you are read­ing and you wouldn’t even think of putting your­self through the tor­ture of start­ing your own busi­ness, I hope you will find some area of your life to apply this great message.

Side note: The copy­right in this book reads 1900, 1901. That makes all of this even more incred­i­ble. This is what Mr. Wash­ing­ton said that sin­cerely lifted me up.

The fol­low­ing pas­sage was in regards to Booker T. Wash­ing­ton build­ing a school from scratch.

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As I look back now over that part of our strug­gle, I am glad that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those dis­com­forts and incon­ve­niences. I am glad that our stu­dents had to dig out the place for their kitchen and din­ing room. I am glad that our first boarding-place was in that dis­mal, ill-lighted, and damp base­ment. Had we started in a fine, attrac­tive, con­ve­nient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and become “stuck up.” It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foun­da­tion which one has made for one’s self.

When our stu­dents return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beau­ti­ful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted din­ing room, and see tempt­ing, well-cooked food — largely grown by the stu­dents them­selves — and see the tables, neat table­cloths and nap­kins, and vases of flow­ers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no dis­or­der, and with almost no com­plaint com­ing from the hun­dreds that now fill our din­ing room, they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did, and built our­selves up year by year, by a slow and nat­ural process of growth.

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