Darkwater | Page 7

I had missed a Harvard scholarship? _Suppose_ the Slater
Board had then, as now, distinct ideas as to where the education of
Negroes should stop? Suppose _and_ suppose! As I sat down calmly on
flat earth and looked at my life a certain great fear seized me. Was I the
masterful captain or the pawn of laughing sprites? Who was I to fight a
world of color prejudice? I raise my hat to myself when I remember
that, even with these thoughts, I did not hesitate or waver; but just went
doggedly to work, and therein lay whatever salvation I have achieved.
First came the task of earning a living. I was not nice or hard to please.
I just got down on my knees and begged for work, anything and
anywhere. I wrote to Hampton, Tuskegee, and a dozen other places.
They politely declined, with many regrets. The trustees of a backwoods
Tennessee town considered me, but were eventually afraid. Then,
suddenly, Wilberforce offered to let me teach Latin and Greek at $750
a year. I was overjoyed!
I did not know anything about Latin and Greek, but I did know of
Wilberforce. The breath of that great name had swept the water and
dropped into southern Ohio, where Southerners had taken their cure at
Tawawa Springs and where white Methodists had planted a school;
then came the little bishop, Daniel Payne, who made it a school of the
African Methodists. This was the school that called me, and when

re-considered offers from Tuskegee and Jefferson City followed, I
refused; I was so thankful for that first offer.
I went to Wilberforce with high ideals. I wanted to help to build a great
university. I was willing to work night as well as day. I taught Latin,
Greek, English, and German. I helped in the discipline, took part in the
social life, begged to be allowed to lecture on sociology, and began to
write books. But I found myself against a stone wall. Nothing stirred
before my impatient pounding! Or if it stirred, it soon slept again.
Of course, I was too impatient! The snarl of years was not to be undone
in days. I set at solving the problem before I knew it. Wilberforce was a
colored church-school. In it were mingled the problems of
poorly-prepared pupils, an inadequately-equipped plant, the natural
politics of bishoprics, and the provincial reactions of a country town
loaded with traditions. It was my first introduction to a Negro world,
and I was at once marvelously inspired and deeply depressed. I was
inspired with the children,--had I not rubbed against the children of the
world and did I not find here the same eagerness, the same joy of life,
the same brains as in New England, France, and Germany? But, on the
other hand, the ropes and myths and knots and hindrances; the
thundering waves of the white world beyond beating us back; the
scalding breakers of this inner world,--its currents and back eddies--its
meanness and smallness--its sorrow and tragedy--its screaming farce!
In all this I was as one bound hand and foot. Struggle, work, fight as I
would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing. I had all the
wild intolerance of youth, and no experience in human tangles. For the
first time in my life I realized that there were limits to my will to do.
The Day of Miracles was past, and a long, gray road of dogged work
lay ahead.
I had, naturally, my triumphs here and there. I defied the bishops in the
matter of public extemporaneous prayer and they yielded. I bearded the
poor, hunted president in his den, and yet was re-elected to my position.
I was slowly winning a way, but quickly losing faith in the value of the
way won. Was this the place to begin my life work? Was this the work
which I was best fitted to do? What business had I, anyhow, to teach

Greek when I had studied men? I grew sure that I had made a mistake.
So I determined to leave Wilberforce and try elsewhere. Thus, the third
period of my life began.
First, in 1896, I married--a slip of a girl, beautifully dark-eyed and
thorough and good as a German housewife. Then I accepted a job to
make a study of Negroes in Philadelphia for the University of
Pennsylvania,--one year at six hundred dollars. How did I dare these
two things? I do not know. Yet they spelled salvation. To remain at
Wilberforce without doing my ideals meant spiritual death. Both my
wife and I were homeless. I dared a home and a temporary job. But it
was a different daring from the days of my first youth. I was ready to
admit that the best of men