Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery on April 5, 1856, in Hale’s Ford, Virginia. Booker grew up on the plantation of James Burroughs with his mother, who worked there as a cook. His father was an unknown white man, likely from a nearby plantation. Booker began working as a child, carrying 100-pound bags of grain to the plantation’s mill. Passing by a nearby school one day, he looked in the window and saw children his age reading, and he longed to do the same. When the Civil War was over, Booker’s family moved to Malden, West Virginia, where his mother married freedman Washington Ferguson. Booker did his part to help the struggling family by working with his stepfather in the salt furnaces. His mother recognized his desire to learn, so she bought him a book. He woke up every morning to study and soon learned to read and write. It was also around this time he took his stepfather’s first name as his last name.