BOOTSTRAP
By Michael Alexander Smith SEMA ‘69
" Your child does not belong to you, and you must
prepare your child to pick up the burden of his life long before the
moment when you must lay your burden down."
-James Baldwin
THE RECENT reunion the graduates of St. Emma Military Academy and St.
Francis de Sales High School was a joyous yet serious affair. In the
1950s and 1960s, St. Emma, located in rural Virginia 33 miles west of
Richmond, was the only African-American military high school in the
country. St. Francis was its sister school. When we gathered in Myrtle
Beach, S.C. -professors, truck drivers, doctors, real estate developers,
teachers, accountants and union organizers -we hugged and kissed,
partied and shopped. But in the background of all the renewed
friendships and sentimental memories were the realities of our time: an
explosive teenage pregnancy rate, wanton shootings inspired by the drug
trade, babies planning their own funerals and, in general, a disregard
for life.
We came together not merely to wax nostalgic but to rekindle the spirit
of the two schools so that it might reach the souls of those lost
children.
The schools themselves are closed, the victims of declining enrollments
in the early 1970s. Grass has grown up between the cracks of the black
top where we used to drill. The hallowed St. Edward Chapel of the
Confessor is no more. Claver Hall, the gray castle where I lived on the
third floor for three years, is now a vacant lot. Everything was leveled
except the centerpiece of the campus, the Belmead mansion, an
architectural masterpiece built in 1838 by a West Point graduate who
went on to become a colonel in the Confederate army. It would be ironic
indeed if his legacy outlived ours.
St. Emma had the ability to turn misdirected and confused boys around
while enhancing the skills of the gifted. The school was not effective
with everyone nor was it a panacea for every problem that plagued the
black community, but it had a positive effect on most of us. As
graduates of St. Emma we were equipped, not with 9mm pistols, but with
diplomas, pride and confidence. We were keenly aware how wonderful it
would have been to send our sons there or create a scholarship fund to
get those lost kids off the six-o'clock news and into the study halls.
I certainly didn't come to St. Emma's as a model student. I had been
going to Woodson Junior High School, getting into fist fights and
receiving the most dismal report cards. In the fall of 1966, St. Emma's
became my destiny. It was the first time I had been away from my home in
the River Terrace neighborhood of Northeast
Washington. The student body numbered approximately 300 cadets; St.
Francis had 130 young ladies. I had never known what it was like to wake
up in the morning to hear the sounds of cows, chickens and bugles. At a
tender age, I had to learn to trust strange kids just a few years older
than I who were responsible for my
well-being. My fellow cadets were from the Caribbean and Africa, from
every major city in the United States and some not so major. There were
Catholics and Baptists and atheists. Some were sons of doctors; some
were delinquents choosing St. Emma's detention. Most of us were average
kids needing to do a lot of growing up.
Initially, I did not understand the strict regimentation of life at The
Rock, as St. Emma's was affectionally known. "New boys," or first-year
cadets, had to be on the parade ground with our uniforms neatly pressed,
shoes spit-shined and our brass sparkling in the sunlight. We practiced
standing tall and proud, looking
straight ahead with our hands cuffed along the seams of our trousers.
Sometimes we would stand in formation without moving for an hour, just
to practice our discipline. When our platoon leader, Lieutenant Larry
"Pop" Populas, gave the command, we all stepped off on our left foot and
marched in unison.
Eventually, the young lieutenant would put together a series of marching
orders and ask us to perform them on command. Much to our surprise we
found ourselves executing each order with precision.
By November, I was getting the best grades of my life, perhaps because
of the strategic isolation of the campus, perhaps because there was no
TV available. Thanksgiving was approaching and our battalion was ready
for its first public parade of the year. Our families and girlfriends
were present. We wore our dress
grey jackets, white caps, white gloves and white trousers. The officers'
sabers glistened next to their maroon sashes. The cadet adjutant gave
the command -"Battalion, present arms!" -and 275 hands simultaneously
slapped the wooden stock of M-1 rifles. The band played the national
anthem while the American flag was
being raised. That was the first time and the last time I shed a tear
during the playing of the anthem.
No, that tear was not shed because I thought of mom, country and apple
pie. The tear was shed because the parade was the culmination of all
that we had worked so hard for. We were a bunch of mixed-up kids, very
much like the kids I see on the streets today. The tear was shed because
I was able to see the beauty of and understand the lesson in discipline
and respect. Besides, these brothers in the band played the hell out of
the anthem!
It was many years later, in my martial arts class, that I began to
reflect on what Pop was doing with his platoon. He was using peer
pressure. It was peer pressure that made each cadet in my platoon want
to perform well on the blacktop. It was peer pressure that kept many new
boys from running away from the strict way of life on The Rock, just
like the peer pressure that encourages young men to settle disputes
violently in the streets all over America. Pop was building a corps -a
unified body. He was asking us to give him the best we had to offer. We
gave him something that we did not know we had.
And this perhaps is what we lack today: enough of us to ask our children
to be the best that they can be. In his prophetic 1965 essay entitled
"Employment, Income and the Negro Family," Daniel Patrick Moynihan
talked about poverty and the need to take an active interest in the
young of that day because, if they were left to their own devices, our
society would pay dearly for the negative consequences. And now we are.
Perhaps part of the reason is that institutions like St. Emma and St.
Francis de Sales were allowed to close in the early 1970s. A rich and
interesting tradition was broken, if only temporarily.
St. Emma Industrial and Agricultural Institute was founded in 1895 by
Katharine and Louise Drexel, the nieces of Anthony J. Drexel, a
multimillionaire business tycoon from Philadelphia and the namesake of
Drexel University. The school was named for their stepmother, Emma
Bouvier (who was the great-great aunt of Jacqueline Onassis), and was
housed in the Belmead mansion. It was intended to educate Negro and
Indian boys. By the end of the first year 19 students had enrolled, and
the Drexel sisters had decided to found a girls school, St. Francis de
Sales, a half mile away.
For the five-year program at St. Emma, tuition was $2 for the first year
and was increased $2 each year to a maximum of $8. Those enrolled in the
postgraduate program were given a $2 per month stipend and a $50 bonus
at the end of the school year. Contact with the girls of St. Francis was
limited to a few social events;
the cadets remained on campus for the entire school year.
For an advanced education in the trades and arts, St. Emma was
considered a model institution in the state of Virginia. It offered the
latest techniques in farming, carpentry, masonry, blacksmithing, shoe
making and auto mechanics. The cadets built the infrastructure and many
of the buildings on both campuses. Most of
the resources needed to run the schools, such as food and lumber, came
directly from the school's hundreds of acres.
In 1947 St. Emma came under the supervision of the Holy Ghost Fathers
and changed its focus and name to become St. Emma Military Academy. The
Academy became more academically oriented with emphasis on college
preparation and a sharp military bearing. Nevertheless, the various shop
and agricultural classes
were still offered because it was difficult for Negro men to acquire
professional positions in the south. St. Francis de Sales always
maintained its strict academic standards. "We did not have any domestic
training. St. Francis' girls have always had a strong tradition of
academic excellence," according to Hattie Toppins Delgado, class of
1941.
By the late 1960s, enrollment at both schools was declining. The social
changes of the times and the coming of school desegregation contributed
to the belief that the schools' mission was outdated. St. Francis was
closed in 1971. In May 1972, St. Emma Military Academy graduated its
last class. The board of directors had decided that the school "had
outlived its usefulness," according to board member Edward J. Berry,
class of 1928.
"I really cried when the schools closed," Berry recalled in a 1982
interview. He remembered a letter that the school's co-founder, Louise
Drexel Morrell, wrote to him shortly before her death in 1945. She told
him that the school should be integrated "when the time comes." (Ten
white cadets were among the student body in its final year.) "I kept
thinking about that letter," Berry continued. "She said, `St. Emma is
yours. Keep it going.' "
Those words came to mind again recently when I saw a comedian on TV
mimicking the common scene on the evening news: a young man being led
away handcuffed with a jacket covering his head. The comedian's effort
to comment on reality with a humorous twist just did not work for me
because the ugly truth pierced my heart. Intellectually, I understand
that the majority of African-American children are good kids.
Emotionally, as a African-American man, it is the few kids that I see in
trouble on the news that cause me, as a caring person, to die just a
little each night.
As the African proverb says, "It takes the entire village to raise a
child." With that wisdom in mind, Earl Wilkins, a 1965 alumnus of St.
Emma and a businessman in Richmond, is attempting to revive the spirit
of St. Emma and St. Francis. He and other alumni are negotiating with
the owners of the grounds of the old St. Francis de Sales with the goal
of establishing a new school to be called the Virginia Center for
Science and Mathematics. Wilkins' objective is to create an environment
conducive to learning, away from the distractions and chaos of urban
life. Emphasis, of course, will be on nurturing and advancing students'
interest in these disciplines and to prepare them for the future. I
think the Drexel sisters would be pleased.