Viewing page 10 of 14

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Page 4

Western reserve and the University of Chicago. Ben was convinced he could get along with them. There [[strikethrough]]was eve[[/strikethrough]] had even been a little friendly, get-acquainted crap game between sections of the tests, and everything was as pleasant as you please. Something about that examination and his failure in it convinced Ben that the forces against him were no greater that those that work in his favor. He felt for the first time that he definitely had a chance. In fact, he had a [[underlined]]second[[/underlined]] chance.

During January and February of 1932 Ben knuckled down to a couple of months of solid digging. He was reviewing and freshening up on the subjects covered by the examinations. He had been reappointed, and he was taking a second crack at the entrance [[strikethrough]]examination[[/strikethrough]] requirements. Then in March he sat down with another bunch of college boys, and a few of the old ones who had come back like himself, determined to make up for lost time. This time Ben was ready– ready in mind and spirit– and the result is history now. The whole nation heard the news when Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., got the returns from his tests and headed for West Point with the class that entered the first day of July, 1932.

But many Americans watched with doubt and fear. Would this be a repetition of what had happen a couple of years earlier? Would young Ben end his career in the same way? Many eyebrows were raised. Not Ben's however. He had been pointed out to the world as a representative of all colored youth. Some Americans whose education had failed to teach[[strikethrough]]ed[[/strikethrough]] them that there is no such thing as superior and inferior races, only inferior and superior individuals, wondered whether or not a colored boy could stand the rigid tempering Uncle Sam gives his cadets. Colored Americans and many others who had begun to doubt the fairness of democracy when it comes to giving a chance to [[underlined]]any[[/underlined]] worthy and deserving boy sat back and waited for the doublecross– wondering what form it would take this time. Many of them grew intensely sad, for they were all greatly impressed by young Ben. They thought he was muck too fine a kid to suffer what they believed to be in store for him.

But Ben let them all think [[strikethrough]]would[[/strikethrough]] what they would. He entered the Military Academy on the first day og July, and a curtain fell between him and the outside world, a curtain which seldom raised– and then only brief moments– during the next four years. Now, however– now that it is all safely in the past. a few fragments of his West Point experience can be recalled. The story is pieced to-gether by reading between the lines of Ben's own simple account of life in the Military Academy and by combining these with impressions brought out by his own classmates and instructors. There is no longer a doubt that a significant American drama was acted out during those four tense years– a drama which came close to tragedy at times but finally rose to a happy ending