50 Years After

After the Civil War, several Negroes were elected from Southern States to take seats in the House of Representatives. Soon those Negroes nominated youths of their own race for the U. S. service academies at Annapolis and West Point. In 1873 two young Negroes passed the Annapolis entrance examinations and were admitted. Within the year both resigned, because of "deficiencies in their studies." The next year, another Negro went to study at the Naval Academy. Before his plebe (first) term was out he was dismissed, for using "profane and vile" language to a classmate.

So fared the only Negroes ever admitted to Annapolis. At West Point, Negroes have fared better. Of twelve who were sent to West Point, three were graduated. The bones of one of them, Col. Charles Young, today rest in sacred Arlington as recognition of work well done in far-off Liberia.

Last week, some 50 years after the Reconstruction Period, began three new chapters in the history of Negroes at U. S. training schools. Dignified, grey-wooled Oscar de Priest, the Negro who has succeeded the late Martin Barnaby Madden as Representative of Chicago's black-belt ist District, sent up the names of two young Negroes for admission to Annapolis. A third he nominated for West Point. All were boys from his District. All are high-school graduates with reputations for studious application, fine character. Laurence A. Whitfield and Claude Henson Burns are the Annapolis nominees. Alonzo Souleigh Parham, cadet major in his school's R. O. T. C., an expert with the rifle, is the West Point candidate.

Last week Negro boy Burns failed his mental examination. Negro boy Whitfield failed to appear, but an alternate, Negro boy Charles Edward Weir, passed.