Booker T. Washington wrote of The Black Man's Burden, It is in this sense that I can say of the book that Mr. Holtzclaw has written that it is the story, not merely of the life of an individual, or of a school, but it is at the same time a very important chapter in the history of Negro education. Based on the urgings of various friends, Holtzclaw published the story of his life in order to tell ... the story of many others like myself who have struggled to get an education and to be of use in the world, but whose efforts will never be known. Using his experiences as a premise, Holtzclaw succeeds in relaying to his reader a narrative about the spirit and progress of Negro education in the industrial high schools of the rural south during the late 1800s.