on c-span3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nation's past. >> campaign 2020, watch our live coverage of the presidential candidates on the campaign trail and make up your own mind. c-spancampaign 2020, your unfiltered view of politics. >> booker t. washington was born into slavery in 1856. he's best known as the founder

of the tusk gee institute and was a prominent figure in the african-american community. up next, we learn about his connection to west virginia and how his life there shaped him s a future leader. >> booker t. washington was for 20 years the spokesman and leader of african-americans in america. and at the time, we had horrible jim crow race codes in the south. that didn't happen here in west virginia. it was a different sort of race relations. and what he observed with his boyhood heroes was the building of a black middle class, and that really became his path, his career path as he went from tuskegee to being a national celebrity. booker was born in a place called hales ford, south of roanoke, virginia, about 225 miles from here, and in those first nine years, he was a

slave boy. he didn't have pants. he wore a slave boy shirt. shoes were two wooden slats with a piece of leather across each toe, across the top. he wanted very much to go to school. he saw white children going to school. he wanted to do that, but he really wasn't able to do any of those things. they leave the farm in virginia in 1865 pretty soon after the civil war ends. there's a soldier, a union soldier, who comes to the farm and reads the emancipation proclamation announcing that they are free and that they can leave. and his mother cried. she said that she never thought that she would live long enough to see her children liberated. after the civil war, west virginia did not have the devastation that the confederate south did. this area was, except for a short period of about four months, was under union control practically the whole war. and throughout west virginia,

you did not have the economic devastation that you had in the confederate south. it made a big difference after the war. the other thing that was different, too, is that the slave population in west virginia is very small, probably the smallest of any area in the slave south. and there was something like 4% of the state's population were african-americans. so there wasn't that threat by in r of the power elite west virginia that was posed by black in the deep south. the family came here because washington ferg son, the stepfather, was working here for the roughners in their salt works, their salt factory, and also in the coal mines that they owned here in marylanden. he sent money to his wife in order to get a horse and buggy to bring her and the kids to

malden. and once they arrived, they find a wonderful community of christian believers that are centered in the roughner slave quarters. she gets the job first as a chamber scommade then as a cook. she gets them to hire booker as a garden and house boy, knowing that he would learn social graces, he'd have their big library available to him, that he would really have a lot of opportunities that otherwise he wouldn't have. as an important part of his being with the roughners, was he developed a familial relationship with mrs. roughner. she was a yankee lady, a second wife. she really likes booker. he really can do no wrong. he's hard working. he's always asking her how many i get ago on, that's a quote she does, am i doing well, he was honest, he was hard working, and he was very bright. and i think she appreciated his talent. and i think that she did something for him that gave him a self-confidence that probably

carried him through his career, because his career was full of crisis and dark hours. but he was able to see himself in her eyes reflected as a perfect being. he was here until he was about 15, and he went to hampton to school for three years. now, he would go during school term, and then come back in the summers, and the second summer that he came back, his mother passed away suddenly. and it was really a hard time for him, and credits mrs. roughner as being his friend and helping him get back to hampton for his third year. when he graduates from hampton, he's the top student in his class, and he comes back here to teach school. and he says that the favorite years of his life were when he came back and taught school here in malden. but he was restless. that wasn't enough for him. so he went to washington to seminary to see if he wanted to be a minister. that didn't fit. and then he tried reading for the law. that didn't fit.

and so he was trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted to do. one of the things that he did -- and this is very important in his future career -- is west virginia was having a remb dumb on where to place the state capital, and charleston was one of three cities. clarksburg and martinsburg. so people in charleston, they had a republican and a democrat leader to organize talks so that they could go out and convince other counties to vote for charleston. and booker was one who was upposed to go to along the railroad sandrout go to four or five doths convince them to choose charleston, and so it was a speaking tour, his first speaking tour, very successful. all those counties voted overwhelmingly, maybe not because of booker, but he was able to speak to the african-americans that were in those counties. they were mostly coal miners and farm workers. and that set him on a road of being a public speaker, and i'm not sure he's known for that,

but he would speak to thousands of people every year. he would have booked -- he would have tours. he would be on the stage with the governor and a congressman and a senator, and he would always be the star speaker. he was incredible. booker was working at hampton as a teacher when folks from tuskegee, alabama, requested that an educator be sent there to start a school, and so booker went down at age 25, and on july 4, 1881, he started a school at tuskegee. now, he was really just using some abandoned building. everything there had to be built. president ter, mckinley pays a presidential visit to tuskegee, the most important institute for african-americans in america. he's celebrated as a great educator. his philosophy was that we will

educate people here at tuskegee to send back home to their hometowns to be -- to educate others and to build that black middle class. that was his goal. he got that from his boyhood heroes, who his parents bought a house in malden, to integrate, and he saw them with the church, their church members working hard to help future generations rather than themselves to build a black middle class in malden, and they were successful, and he thought that was the path that ought to be taken in the deep south, too. he visited malden every year. he was very devoted to his sister. he would come every year. he was a national celebrity after he gave the state exposition speech called the atlanta compromise, a seven-minute speech, but it made him a national celebrity. he always cultivated his

celebrity status. he was always photographed in a coat and tie. he'd have a hat on if he was out of doors. there's a wonderful newspaper article where he comes to west virginia to hunt and fish and relax, and he's hunting. he has a gun hunting with a coat and tie and boler, and then he's also fishing. he has a fishing pole with a coat and tie and boler, and he would not be photographed looking casual or anything else. he was -- at a time when celebrity was new, and he was very conscious about building that and maintaining that. when booker would talk about being in west virginia, he didn't tell the facts. he saw it as a way of manipulating the they're he's telling. there are several instances. when went to hampton, he said, i was presented with two sheets, and it was a puzzle, and i didn't know what to do.

so i slapped on both the first night -- i think this is the order, and on the second night, i slept under it. and, you know, he couldn't have lived all those years in the home and not known about what sheets were for and how they worked. he also said that at hampton, and this is to my, shocking, but he says in slavery, in hampton he learned about eating meals with table clothes and napkins. well, he couldn't. that couldn't be. maybe he didn't use a tablecloth and a napkin with the family, but he certainly wasn't very far away from it. so, you know, he tells that to make it clear that what he's saying isn't about tablecloths and napkins. what he's saying is he did not experience those kinds of normal social graces. and that simply wasn't true. but again, he was trying to tell a story. the story was more important than the facts that were involved. there's an interesting issue,

too, when he wrote from slavery, he serialized it in a magazine called "outlook" magazine. and in that magazine, there's a photograph of the home, and the caption says, this was the home that booker t. washington left when he went to hampton. it's got a white washed front. nice looking place. very tidy. the fence is up. everything's fine. but he never use that had photograph again. the photograph he used later was one that was current, and it showed clothesline and falling down, boards falling out of the house. the fence was a mess. it looked really, really sad. well, when they bought the home in 1869, four years after they were slaves, it looked pretty good. it was a good, nice, substantial home. and he didn't want folks to know that, because it would make it look like he actually lived a pretty blessed life. there's a governor, governor mccorkle, wrote his memoirs, and he wrote all those

complaints that booker t. washington had about living with general roughner weren't true. he lived a very comfortable life with them. and i think that's true, and his pieographer says that he learned a refined life, and that's something that he wanted for himself. but it is also that life -- that life was important for him to prove he used himself, his life, as an example to the nation at large that, look, look at me, i'm a successful person, and i happen to be african-american. so, you know, he's using his life as an example, encouragement to blacks, but also as an example of proof of equality. booker t. washington's life in west virginia was important and formative for him. it was because of the frontier values that were here, where

the whites really were not aristocratic, like in eastern virginia. they believed that believe were worth. they had self-worth. they believed in the individual, that it was a combination of all these things coming together that gave him the idea of an american dream and gave him the idea of building a black middle class hroughout the south. >> our cities tour staff recently traveled to charleston, west virginia, to learn about its rich history. to watch more video from charleston and other stops on our tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. you're watching american history tv, all tv, all weekendy weekend, on c-span 3. but tv has a life weekend coverage of the miami book fair, starting saturday and sunday, featuring author discussions and interactive viewer call in

segments. on saturday, at 11:00 a.m. eastern, republican senator tom cotton talks about arlington national secretary. susan rice discusses her life and career. of constitutional studies at the university of notre dame on liberalism. greenberg discusses russian hackers. on sunday, never 24th, at 10:30 a.m. eastern -- november 24, at 10:30 a.m. eastern, starting with the proliferation of disinformation in politics. the 1950's red scare. journalist eleanor randolph discusses former new york city mayor michael bloomberg. and former professional football

player don mcpherson on toxic masculinity. watch live coverage of the miami book fair saturday and sunday on c-span 2's book tv. howard ruffner talks about the photos he took on may 4, 1970, when national guard troops shot and killed four students at kent state university in ohio during an anti-vietnam war protest. a student and photographer for the college newspaper at the time, one of his photos was used on the cover of "life" magazine. and he has published a book about his experience, "moments of truth." max: thank you all so much for coming out tonight. tonight, we are hosting the photographer howard ruffner who, during his college years at kent state university was a , photographer for the yearbook and newspaper. his book tonight "moments of truth