Nobody said a word, at least, not to my face. Nobody frothed at the mouth. Nobody cursed. Nobody’s face twisted in hatred and anger. If they were thinking I didn’t belong there they didn’t show it. I might just as well have been another student. I was aware of the difference, but it made little difference to me. A few minutes before I had been crossing campus in the middle of the quad when the bell rang to change classes. Two thousand five hundred and ninety-nine Negroes and one white boy. Surrounded. You’d think that would’ve snagged my attention, and, being human, I guess it must have, but not for long. A nanosecond. Maybe it took me that to realize that the world as I’d known it had changed. Of course, that was the case with the Marine Corps as well. Life after Parris Island would never again be the same, even now, as I write this, sixty plus years later. Except most of my fellow Jarheads were white. Not now. Just me. Singular. Only no one seemed to notice but me. Whatever negative thoughts they harbored, the students kept them to themselves. No one ever even asked me what I was doing there.
What was I doing there?
My academic record was so abysmal that my choices were limited to none. I had failed out of college yet again. Re-upping for another tour of active duty was a possibility, but my personality was no longer suitable to such an authoritarian institution. I had “Sir, yes, Sirred” one last time. A neighbor, a white woman, suggested Morgan. She worked as a secretary to Dean Whiting, dean of students. Why not talk to him? Why not?
It was a hot, humid day between the start of summer school and the end of the semester when I set foot on campus for the first time. Dr. Whiting had agreed to meet with me. He was a gentle man with a sweet smile in an office lined wall to wall with books. I don’t remember our conversation, but I must have plead my case: Gimme another shot, please. I do remember his response: what makes you think you’d do any better here? And that’s when years of delusion came crashing to a halt. Because I’d be studying what I wanted, not what other folks expected of me. I’d taken it into my head that pre-med was the way to go, that comparative vertebrate morphology and not Wordsworth was my future. I can blame my parents for a lot but not that. I think my Dad didn’t really care what I did. Maybe he just assumed I’d go into the business. That would’ve been fine with Mom, as well. So, it wasn’t them. The notion just seeped in. Be respectable. Be a doctor. All the while, nobody really cared but me.
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