Booker T. Washington

Lesson Procedure:

Print the reading comprehension passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions. Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Lesson Excerpt:

Booker T. Washington was born in 1856 to a white father and black slave mother in Virginia. He was a slave for the first nine years of his life. Then one day in 1865, all of the slaves were called to the master’s house and told that they were free. Slavery had ended. Booker’s stepfather, who was already in West Virginia, sent for Booker and his family. They rode by wagon to West Virginia, a trip that took ten days. In West Virginia, Booker and his brother John worked in coalmines and salt mines. A man named William Davis opened a school for the children of freed slaves, and Booker was allowed to attend as long as he worked before and after school to bring in money for his family.

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