As they sat at tea in the Tiergarten, under the tall black trees, Matthew’s story came pouring out:
“I was born in Virginia, Prince James County, where we black folk own most of the land. My mother, now many years a widow, farmed her little forty acres to educate me, her only child. There was a good school there with teachers from Hampton, the great boarding-school not far away. I was young when I finished the course and was sent to Hampton. There I was unhappy. I wanted to study for a profession, and they insisted on making me a farmer. I hated the farm. My mother finally sent me North. I boarded first with a cousin and then with friends in New York and went through high school and through the City College. I specialized on the premedical course, and by working nights and summers and playing football (amateur, of course, but paid excellent ‘expenses’ in fact), I was able to enter the new great medical school of the University of Manhattan, two years ago.
“It was a hard pull, but I plunged the line. I had to have scholarships, and I got them, although one Southern professor gave me the devil of a time.”
The lady interrupted. “Southern?” she asked. “What do you mean by ‘Southern’?”
“I mean from the former slave States—although the phrase isn’t just fair. Some of our most professional Southerners are Northern-born.”
The lady still looked puzzled, but Matthew talked on.
“This man didn’t mean to be unfair, but he honestly didn’t believe ‘niggers’ had brains, even if he had the evidence before him. He flunked me on principle. I protested and finally had the matter up to the Dean; I showed all my other marks and got a reexamination at an extra cost that deprived me of a new overcoat. I gave him a perfect paper, and he had to acknowledge it was ‘good,’ although he made careful inquiries to see if I had not in some way cribbed dishonestly.
“At last I got my mark and my scholarship. During my second year there were rumors among the few colored students in the clinical hospital, especially with white women patients. I laughed. It was, I was sure, a put-up rumor to scare us off. I knew black men who had gone through New York medical schools which had become parts of this great new consolidated school. There had been no real trouble. The patients never objected—only Southern students and the few Southern professors. Some of the trustees had mentioned the matter but had been shamed into silence.
“Then, too, I was firm in my Hampton training; desert and hard work were bound to tell. Prejudice was a miasma that character burned away. I believed thoroughly. I had literally pounded my triumphant way through school and life. Of course I had made insult and rebuff here and there, but I ignored them, laughed at them, and went my way. Those black people who cringed and cowered, complained of failure and ‘no chance,’ I despised—weaklings, cowards, fool! Go to work! Make a way! Compel recognition!
“In the medical school there were two other colored men just managing to crawl through. I covertly sneered at them, avoided them. What business had they there with no ability or training? I see differently now. I see there may have been a dozen reasons why Phillips of Mississippi could neither spell nor read correctly and why Jones of Georgia could not count. They had no hardworking mother, no Hampton, no happy accidents of fortune to help them on.
“While I? I rose to triumph after triumph. Just as in college I had been the leading athlete and had ridden many a time aloft on white students’ shoulders, so now, working until two o’clock in the morning and rising at six, I took prize after prize—the Mitchel Honor in physiology, the Welbright medal in pathology, the Shores Prize for biological chemistry. I ranked the second-year class at last commencement, and at our annual dinner at the Hotel Pennsylvania, sat at the head table with the medal men. I remember one classmate. He was from Atlanta, and he hesitated and whispered when he found his seat was beside me. Then he sat down like a man and held out his hand. ‘Towns,’ he said, ‘I never associated with a Negro before who wasn’t a servant or laborer; but I’ve heard of you, and you’ve made a damned fine record. I’m proud to sit by you.’
“I shook his hand and choked. He proved my life-theory. Character and brains were too much for prejudice. Then the blow fell. I had slaved all summer. I was worked to a frazzle. Reckon my hard-headedness had a hand there, too. I wouldn’t take a menial job—Pullman porter, waiter, bellboy, boat steward—good money, but I waved them aside. No! Bad for the soul, and I might meet a white fellow student.”
The lady smiled. “Meet a fellow student—did none of them work, too?”
“O yes, but seldom as menials, while Negroes in America are always expected to be menials. It’s natural, but—no, I couldn’t do it. So at last I got a job in Washington in the medical statistics department of the National Benefit. This is one of our big insurance concerns. O yes, we’ve got a number of them; prosperous, too. It was hard work, indoors, poor light and air; but I was interested—worked overtime, learned the game, and gave my thought and ideas.
“They promoted me and paid me well, and by the middle of August I had my tuition and book money saved. They wanted me to stay with them permanently; at least until fall. But I had other plans. There was a summer school of two terms at the college, and I figured that if I entered the second term I could get a big lead in my obstetrical work and stand a better show for the Junior prizes. I had applied in the spring for admission to the Stern Maternity Hospital, which occupied three floors of our center building. My name had been posted as accepted. I was tired to death, but I rushed back to New York to register. Perhaps if I had been rested, with cool head and nerves—well, I wasn’t. I made the office of the professor of obstetrics on a hot afternoon, August 10, I well remember. He looked at me in surprise.
“ ‘You can’t work in the Stern Hospital—the places are all taken.’
“ ‘I have one of the places,’ I pointed out. He seemed puzzled and annoyed.
“ ‘You’ll have to see the Dean,’ he said finally.
“I was angry and rushed to the Dean’s office. I saw that we had a new Dean—a Southerner.
“Then the blow fell. Seemingly, during the summer the trustees had decided gradually to exclude Negroes from the college. In the case of students already in the course, they were to be kept from graduation by a refusal to admit them a certain course, particularly in obstetrics. The Dean was to break the news by letter as students applied for the course, I had been accepted before the decision; so now he had to tell me. He hated the task, I could see. But I was too surprised, disgusted, furious. He said that I could not enter, and he told me brutally why. I threw my papers in his face and left. All my fine theories of race and prejudice lay in ruins. My life was overturned. America was impossible—unthinkable. I ran away, and here I am.”