Deaf American Prose 1830-1930

A Fight with a Highwayman

A Fight with a Highwayman 249 A Fight with a Highwayman THE FOLLOWING WAS prepared in compliance with a request for a summary of O’Kelly’s life and experiences:* One who is endowed with all the senses has a great trust and has been divinely blessed. All enjoy the blessing but few appreciate the blessing or the trust. I have always felt that I had much for which to account and I fervently thank the only true God that, coming “out of the night that covered me,” I realized that I was “unconquerable”; that I was the “master of my fate—the captain of the soul.”** I have never had to any extent a judicial career nor am I interested, more than any fairly intelligent man should be, in politics. My natural inclination is toward socialism but I am distinctly independent in politics. To me Alexander Hamilton is America’s greatest historical character. But, as between Hamilton, the Federalist and Jefferson, the Democrat, I prefer Jefferson. I was licensed to practice law by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1908. I did not actively engage in the practice until 1920. I took a special course in English in Shaw University before I was licensed to practice law and I was back in Shaw in 1909 for a B.L. course. I was in Yale from 1910 to 1912 and taught school one year (1918–1919). I have engaged some in journalism: for nearly three years I have been connected with The Chicago Defender, the greatest weekly paper of the negro race and I am on the editorial staff of The Carolina Times which is published in Durham. I am not a full fledged college graduate. There is but one college for the deaf in the United States—Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C. This college is supported by the United States government and is open to all deaf-mutes in America who can pass the required examination. I tried to pass this examination in 1897 when I was 17 and failed. Later I applied for admission to Kendall Green, a preparatory school, but was refused. I next sought admission to New York Institution for the Deaf and Blind—I still wished to enter Gallaudet. I was a non-resident of New York and I could not pay tuition, which amounted to something over $400. I was greatly discouraged by the thought that as far as education attainments were concerned, I could never rise above “A Fight with a Highwayman” is from The Silent Worker 39, no. 6 (1927). Originally published in the Greensboro Daily News (July 11, 1926). *This was composed in response to a number of questions from the reporter; questions are interposed between sections of O’Kelly’s narrative. —Eds. **This is from the poem by William Ernest Henley, “Invictus” (1875).—Eds. 250 Roger Demosthenes O’Kelly mediocrity. However, I am something more than a human nonentity: I am at least, as far as I can ascertain, the only colored deaf-mute lawyer in the United States and I am the second deaf-mute to enter Yale, with its illustrious history of nearly 20 years. The first deaf-mute to graduate from Yale was Dr. Samuel Porter, one of the earliest and most celebrated members of the faculty of Gallaudet College. In December, 1909, with the sole purpose of earning enough money to enter Yale, I went to work for the T.A. Gillespie Company which was constructing the Catskill Aqueduct, a tunnel 119 miles long, designed to carry water from Catskill mountains to New York City. The tunnel was being driven under mountains, cities and rivers and from 500 to 2000 feet under ground. The thousands of men employed in this work had been gathered from the four corners of the earth. We lived in shanties, had bunks filled with straw covered by blankets and did our own cooking. One Saturday after being paid off I went to the village store for provisions. On my way back I met a camp straggler. He made a sign which indicated “hands up.” He was about my size and as I was an old football player, I decided to try him. He quickly advanced and before I knew it had his hands in my pocket and had grabbed my money. I caught his hand causing him to drop the money and I got it back. It was impossible to do any real fighting; there had been a sleet...