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I decided, however, that I would rather try Mrs. Ruffner’s house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my mother applied to her for the vacant position.  I was hired at a salary of $5 per month. (About $114 in 2023 dollars–so not much of a wage at all for a live-in job.) –Booker T. Washington

The Ruffners owned both the salt furnace and the coal mine that Booker had worked at.  He didn’t change employers in any real way, just his working conditions.  After working for Mrs. Ruffner for perhaps a couple of years, Booker set out for Hampton not knowing where it was or anything definitely about it other than it was east in old Virginia.  Booker was disappointed when he learned that in Richmond there was no place he might stay and he was now hungry and broke on top of it.  He found a spot under a boardwalk to hide and sleep until morning.  The next day he found dock work to pay the rest of his fare to Hampton.  

When I first went to Hampton I do not recall that I had ever slept in a bed that had two sheets on it…I was among the youngest of the students who were in Hampton at the time. Most of the students were men and women—some as old as forty years of age. As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest as these men and women were. Every hour was occupied in study or work. –Booker T. Washington

Booker had managed to leave the mines behind and obtain an education that would allow him to improve not only his own life, but forge a path that would insure that those in the future would remember him as well.

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