Amid the rolling hills of southwest Virginia sits a tiny park that tells an impactful story. There’s a small visitor center and museum, a few farm animals, a couple short trails, and a smattering of historic structures, replicas of Civil War-era farm buildings.
On site is also the precise spot where a family of slaves lined up to hear the message that they were free.
Booker T. Washington was an educator, intellectual, writer, orator, and advisor to US presidents in late 19th and early 20th century America. He founded and was the first president of the Tuskegee Institute, devoting himself to educating generations of freed slaves and their descendants.
Washington was one of the most impactful public figures in late 19th and early 20th century America. He was also a former slave.
Washington was born into slavery in 1856 on a farm owned by slave traders. Today that farm bears his name, protected in his honor as Booker T. Washington National Monument.
When Washington was 9 years old, he stood beside the porch of his master’s home, and listened to an edict being read, something called the Emancipation Proclamation. His mother wept and explained to him that he and his family were no longer slaves.
Freedom meant that Washington could leave this farm, that he could get an education. And thus began the journey of a boy who would grow to be one of the most celebrated men of his people and his nation.
Booker T. Washington learned much in the fields of the modern day national monument. He learned about violence and bondage. He learned about freedom and joy. He learned about stolen moments of beauty and peace.
Today, you can walk the woods where Washington learned to love nature, a subject he shared with his students at the Tuskegee Institute. As a boy, he and his fellow slaves would often sneak off to nearby woods to avoid the watchful eyes of their masters. Washington found solace there.
As an adult and free man, Washington still took his family “into the woods, where we can live for a while near the heart of nature…surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers…this is solid rest.”
Each summer, Booker T. Washington National Monument hosts a Juneteenth celebration that culminates in a reenactment of the moment when Washington and his family were freed. The park tells the story of one man’s journey, but that journey is representative of the one that so many took, stepping out of slavery and into the light of a harsh world.
When you visit, you can explore a replica of the small cabin where Washington was born and lived out his first few years of bondage. You can roam the woods that sustained his spirit in difficult times. You can search for the patch of land that brought him freedom.
To learn more of Booker T. Washington in his own words, read his autobiography, Up From Slavery.