Born to Rebel: An Autobiography

10. In the Nation's Capital

Chapter X In the Nation's Capital Having completed all course requirements, I had no reason to remain at the University of Chicago beyond the summer quarter of 1934. I was ready now for work in achurch, or in a college or university. I had had some correspondence with church officials about a pastorate in St. Louis. President Thomas E. Jones had offered me work at Fisk. A little later in the summer, Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University in Washington , D.C., invited me to accept the deanship of Howard's School of Religion . President Johnson's offer came after I had accepted the offer to work at Fisk. Although I was morally obligated to go to Fisk, I was strongly drawn to Howard, both because I felt that it offered the greater challenge and because I knew MordecaiJohnson very well. Money played no role in my preference: both offered salaries of less than $4,000 a year. I wrote to President Johnson tellinghim that I would gladly accept his offer provided President Jones would give me an honorable release from my commitment to go to Fisk. I felt that I could ask for such a release only in a face-to-face situation, so I went to Nashville for a conference. Thomas Jones graciously granted my release and I accepted the position at Howard. I was eager to go to Howard for several reasons. I felt the challenge to make the School of Religion outstanding, to lift it, if possible, from its stepchild role to a place of respectability in the institution. Moreover, I had great admiration for Mordecai Johnson. He made a tremendous impression on me when I first heard him speak while I was a teacher at Morehouse, and thereafter I had followed his career. In 1926, when the news broke that Mordecai Johnson, a Negro, had been elected to the presidency of Howard University, a group of us had had a heated argument on the campus of the State College at Orangeburg, South Carolina. Since its founding in 1867, only white men had served Howard as president , and Mordecai Johnson's election ignited the same old argument. Whenever a Negro was elected to a high position formerly held by a white '39 140 B O R N T O R E B E L man, the "doubting Thomases" would wonder loud and long, "Can a Negro do the job?" In the case of Howard University and Mordecai Johnson, the major question was, "Can he possibly get the necessary money from Congress ?" Each year Southern congressmen foughtthe appropriation to Howard . The few of us who were convinced that there were several able Negroes who could do impressive work as president of Howard University cited as evidence that Booker T. Washington and Robert Russa Moton had built Tuskegee; that John Hope, a Negro, had been president of Morehouse College since 1906; and that Negroes were presidents of Negro state colleges . Such arguments, however, made no dent in the position of those who held that the presidency of Howard should be filled by a white man. Much progress has been made in this area since 1926, but many Negroes still have a long way to go before they can rid themselves of the false notion that a white professional is necessarily better qualified than a black one. I once heard Bishop Hickman of the AME Church tell this story: A Negro woman, talking to her next-door neighbor, Mrs. B., told her that their mutual friend, Mrs. C., was ill. "How sick is she?" queried Mrs. B. "She's sick enough to have a white doctor!" was the reply. Systematic undermining ofself-confidence has done damaging things to black people. In 1956, when my wife had a serious illness and I was relying on the able skill and advice of the Morehouse College physician, Dr. J. B. Ellison, some of our close, highly intelligent, well-educated friends urged me to get. a white doctor. I refused. I knew that if Dr. Ellison needed medical counsel, he would seek it. A year later, when Mrs. Mays was doing well, and we went to Mayo Clinic for our periodic check-up, it was the opinion of specialists there that Mrs. Mays had had the very best of care. When the State of Alabama was trying to put Martin Luther King, Jr., behind bars on an income tax charge, some Negroes wanted Martin to get white lawyers. But Martin insisted on...