Sometimes, in the middle of an extraordinary book, I must put it down, screeching to a halt like a speeding Ford Mustang at a stop sign. The butterflies on the stomach demand that I share something that has left me astonished. In the late 1930’s, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund was on a mission to disseminate opportunities for Black folks in a number of areas of American life. One of these avenues was in college graduate courses. During that period, there had been a ruling by the Supreme Court that a state MUST make provisions for Black graduate students to attend either further studies at their state HBCU’s, or if there wasn’t one available in a particular state, then that jurisdiction must grant access to a particular African-American at one of that polity’s “White” schools. The commonwealth of Virginia got around this ruling by creating a specific fund that would pay for a Black person’s graduate study, so long as a Black-Virginia-grad-school-candidate agreed to attend an institution that was physically located outside of Virginia.
This info came to me courtesy of the book Hidden Figures by Ms. Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am currently reading. Mrs. Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson in the movie of the same name), graduated from the HBCU of West Virginia State College. When the previously-mentioned Supreme Court ruling came down, West Virginia State’s President, Dr. John W. Davis, walked away from a $4 million offer from the West Virginia state legislature to fund a new graduate studies program at the school. He was gambling by not allowing the state to fund its only HBCU for the Program, there would be no state access for African-American students, thereby forcing West Virginia to open its doors at up-until-now “White” schools. This gambit could be especially advantageous to someone as brilliant as Mrs. Katherine Johnson. It is true, that in the short-term, the HBCU of West Virginia State would lose out on a segregated graduate program, but in the long-term, this move by Dr. Davis would potentially flower opportunities on a national stage, and in ways that were unimaginable. Ultimately, this decision could even go so far as to have the effect of exposing Mrs. Johnson, and others, to future employment with NASA. This is the small (but significant) story of how Mrs. Johnson was 1 of three of the first African-Americans accepted into the previously all-White West Virginia University Masters Program. She was the ONLY ONE entering into the school’s mathematics program. The OTHER TWO were 2 men absorbed into the University’s law school. I am startled that ANYONE, would have so much integrity, and genuine regard for the long-term progress of an individual student, and the Race as a whole, that he would walk away from $4 million (in 1940 dollars!—Given inflation, and other economic considerations, how much would $4 million in 1940 be worth in the year 2018? Good gracious alive!). Dr. Davis did this. I salute Dr. John W. Davis on his shrewd and discerning gamble. Mr. Davis has immediately become a new hero. Wow! What foresight and integrity!
