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Page 6
The great demonstration ened even more dramatically than it had begun. At the end of the first year at the Military Academy there is always an important gatheringat which those plebes who have stood up under the hard conditioning of the testing year are congratulated by thrie superiors and in turn congratulate each other. Ben Davis came to this annual ceremony congratulating himself silentlyand thinking that at least he had accomplished something for all those colored people who had kept their fingers crossed as they waited to see what would happen to this second colored boy to face the grim music of West Point in recent years. Somebody had to endure it for the first time. The maybe the edge of resentment would be dulled. Ben had made up his mind that the job was his, and he was glad that he had come through the first and most severe year to the satisfaction of the auto rities, at least. He had managed all his studies without great difficulty, and his own spirit had remained unbroken. That will od silence- well, if he could stand it for one year, he could stand it for four. Whoever and whatever was behind it he did not know. Now he cared less than in the past. Let them do their worst!-In this mood he wantto the exercises with the others to see what would happen. Of course, he was not excited, as the others were, for he expected nothing different from what he had experienced during the past months.

To his complete surprise, however he saw a miracle happen. And he was a part of it. When the preliminaries were over and the boys were free to congratulate each other and to receive the congratulation of upperclassmen, Ben suddenly discovered that he was surrounded. Everybody seemed to be looking at him and coming toward him. Everybody in the great hall seemed to be holding something back which he wanted to express. A moment later Ben knew what it was. The boys of his class fell on him like long-lost brothers. They poured congratulations on him as if he had been the hero of a real military action. They swarmed around him. They cheered him nosily and they shook his hand till his arm was weak. Ben Davis, Jr., had stood the most severe test any boy had stood at West Point in at least fifty years, perhaps longer, and he had passed it to the satisfaction of the whole class of his fellows. The wall of silence fell down like the wall of Jerico. It was never raised again.

Indeed, the days of the great snub seemed far away and a trifle unreal to Ben when, three years later, he was handed his diploma by General John J. Pershing at a typical West Point commencement. When he married pretty Agatha Scott of Connecticut, that wretched year seemed out of sight and out of mind. For many of the boys who participated in the campaign of silence spent the next three years trying to live it down. If anybody anywhere ever doubted the metal of young Ben Davis, they doubted no longer.