What hurdles did Booker face on the way to Hampton ?

Booker T Washington only had a small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing he could scrape together when he started for Hampton. At that time, there were no train connecting his part of West Virginia with eastern Virginia. Trains only ran a portion of the way and the remainder of the distance had to be traversed by stage coaches. The distance from Malden to Hampton was about five hundred miles and he had not been away from home for many hours when it began to be painfully evident that he did not have enough money to pay for his fare to Hampton. One of the many experiences that he narrates while recounting his journey was that of travelling over the mountains most of the afternoon in an old fashioned stage-coach which had stopped for the night at a common, unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except Booker was white. The difference that the colour of one's skin could make was something he had not thought about. He had presented himself before the man at the desk but the latter firmly refused to even consider the matter of providing him with food or lodging. It was his first experience in finding out what the colour of his skin meant.