My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather A name.  From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply “Booker.”  Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name.  When I heard the schoolroll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having three.  I was in deep perplexity, because I knew that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one.  By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him “Booker Washington,” as if I had been called by that name all my life; and by that name I have since been known.  Later in my life I found that my mother had given me the name of “Booker Taliaferro” soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found out about it I revived it, and made my full name “Booker Taliaferro Washington.”  I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have.

More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself.  Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort.

The world should not pass judgment upon the Negro, and especially the Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly.  The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little know to those not situated as he is.  When a white boy undertakes a task, it is taken for granted that he will succeed.  On the other hand, people are usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail.  In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him.

The influence of ancestry, however, is important in helping forward any individual or race, if too much reliance is not placed upon it.  Those who constantly direct attention to the Negro youth’s moral weaknesses, and compare his advancement with that of white youths, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling about the old family homesteads.  I have no idea, as I have stated elsewhere, who my grandmother was.  I have, or have had, uncles and aunts and cousins, but I have no knowledge as