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Chronicles of Black courage: Robert R. Moton risked life in fight for Black doctors at Tuskegee Veterans Hospital.

Nothing shows this more clearly than the 1923 ordeal of Robert Russa Moton, Booker T. Washington's successor as president of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). For although Moton, like Washington, was known as an accommodator, he proved, at a crucial moment in our history, that there are limits to accommodation and that it is neither wise nor profitable to push a man too far.

Moton's ordeal grew out of a government decision to build an all-Black veterans hospital on land donated by Tuskegee Institute. At that point--in the 1920s--many disabled Black veterans were "farmed out" to second-rate private facilities or ignored altogether, and the decision raised large questions of public policy especially for Black militants who demanded immediate integration of all veterans hospitals. Failing in that demand, the militants united with moderates on a platform that demanded Black doctors, Black nurses and Black administrative control of the Tuskegee hospital.

The most eloquent and determined advocate of this policy was Robert Moton, who found himself in an embarrassing and possibly disastrous position. For the stability of Tuskegee Institute was founded on accommodation with Tuskegee and Alabama Whites, who were vehemently opposed to Black control of the hospital and who looked forward with eagerness to the $65,000 a month the hospital would pump into the local (White) economy. So compelling were the fears and interests of these Whites that they abandoned basic tenets of the segregationist faith. It was believed then, and later, that it was unwise to introduce White women (nurses, clerks, aides) into all-Black male settings. Alabama law, moreover, made it a crime for White nurses to treat Black male patients. But where there is a White will there is a White way, and the $2,500,000 hospital was dedicated in February 1923, under the arrangement which called for White doctors, White nurses and "colored nurse-maids." The general idea was that each White nurse would be accompanied by a "colored nurse-maid" who would receive menial pay and do the actual work of touching and caring for the Black patients.

But segregationists, not for the Last time, underestimated Robert Russa Moton, who was a master of behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. More to the point, Moton had considerable influence at the White House and scores of undercover agents. To the dismay of some Whites and the surprise of many, Moton--aided by the NAACP, the Black press, Black Republicans, the Black church and the National Medical Association--deployed his forces and persuaded President Warren G. Harding and Veterans Bureau Director Frank T. Hines to reverse their policy. On February 23, 1923, President Harding's secretary sent the following message to the director of the Veterans Bureau:

"I have brought the text of your letter of February 20th to the attention of the President. He has directed me to say that it is his wish that there be no designation of doctors and nurses for the care of the colored soldiers at the United States Veterans Hospital at Tuskegee until there has been a thorough and determined effort to secure a civil service list of eligible Negro citizens. Dr. Moton, Principal of Tuskegee Institute, has assured the President of his willingness to be helpful, and the President asks that you seek his cooperation."

By May 8, President Harding, prodded by Moton, the NAACP and the National Medical Association, was pressing "a gradual and consistent program of installing what is to be ultimately an exclusively colored organization." Under this policy, he explained, White nurses and doctors would be gradually replaced until all major positions were held by Blacks.

The new policy, as can be imagined, set off a storm of controversy in the White South, where the Ku Klux Klan mobilized and threatened, among other things, to burn every building on the Tuskegee campus to the ground. Opposition also came from Alabama Governor William W. Brandon and State Senator Richard It. Powell, a resident of Tuskegee and a candidate for governor. Powell was blunt: "We do not want any Governmental institution in Alabama with niggers in charge. White supremacy in this state must be maintained at any cost, and we are not going to have any niggers in the state whom we cannot control." Senator Powell and others were particularly critical of the role of Moton, who had, they said, betrayed the "good" White people and the legacy of Booker T. Washington. Delegation after delegation carried this message to Moton.

At the height of the controversy, a committee of 15, composed, so it is said, of "the leading citizens of the community," carried a petition to Dr. Moton's office and demanded that he sign it. According to the account Moton gave later, one of the White men said:

"Booker Washington gave 35 years of his life to build up this school. You, unless you are too stubborn to sign a little paper here, are going to have it all blown up in 24 hours."

Another White man said:   "You understand that we have the legislature, we make the laws, we have the judges, the sheriffs, the jails. We have the hardware stores and the arms."

A third man pulled his chair up close and read the bottom line:  "A thousand men--their spokesman called me up this morning--will be over on an hour's notice and wipe out the whole--institution if things are not going the way we want them to go."

What did this mean?

It meant, the man told Robert Moton, that "your life is in our hands."

Dr. Moton, replied, according to his account, with words that would have been memorable under any circumstance but which gained added resonance in that hot and crowded room in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1923:

"Gentlemen, I would be sorry to have any harm come to Tuskegee Institute ... You say my life is in your hands. I do not doubt it. You have in your hands all the things you mentioned--the laws, the judges, the jails, and even the guns ... I haven't a gun in my pocket or anywhere else ... You can wipe me out; you can take my life, gentlemen; but you can't take my character."

Then, speaking quietly and firmly, he said:   "If Negroes who are thoroughly educated and trained for such services can't serve their own people, can't serve in that hospital, on land given by a Negro school, for Negro veterans, provided by the Federal Government; if they can't practice in that hospital, then you may as well wipe out Tuskegee Institute and every other Negro institution in the world. The sooner you do it the better ... so far as I am concerned, gentlemen, I have only one life to give; but I would gladly give a dozen for this cause ... I were to sign that paper, I would be deceiving my people and my country ... It's a Negro hospital, built for Negroes; and, gentlemen, if Negroes trained for the job can't run it, you can wipe out the hospital and the school and Moton."

The meeting ended in heat and controversy, with ominous threats in the air. In the following days, the pressure continued to build, and guards were placed around Dr. Moton's house. The NAACP, fearing bloodshed, asked President Harding to send federal troops to Tuskegee to protect Moton and the Institute.

There was more than melodrama in this, for on July 1 the Klan announced that it was tired of talk and that men from all over the state would converge on Tuskegee on the eve of Independence Day. The next day, Moton's secretary, Albon L. Holsey, warned that the situation was deteriorating. "I do not see how the situation could be worse," he said, "as we are really on top of a volcano and can almost literally hear the lava sputtering down below.

Less than 24 hours later, on Tuesday night, July 3, the man-made lava the exploded with the lighting of a 40-foot cross in the town of Tuskegee. As the flames leaped into the air, a caravan of 70 cars headed for school and the nearby hospital. "The automobiles loaded with garbed and mysterious figures moved," the Montgomery Advertiser reported "like a gliding serpent, while groups of Negroes looked on with equal awe and silence." Black witnesses said the part about the serpent was true, but that Black spectators looked on with curiosity, agreeing with the remark of a Black who said the parade was "the masking of faces and the unmasking of souls."

According to Black witnesses and other sources, the Klan members received aid and comfort from White employees of the hospital. Some Kluxers, according to these reports, wore white sheets from the hospital and enjoyed a leisurely meal in the cafeteria.

Interestingly and significantly, the Klan bypassed Tuskegee Institute. This, according to Pete Daniel, the author of the most authoritative modern account, was no accident. "No doubt," he wrote, "they had learned that other automobiles had arrived the same afternoon from Montgomery, Birmingham, and Mobile. Instead of bearing Klansmen, these automobiles brought graduates and friends of Tuskegee Institute, armed and outraged that Whites were planning violence against Booker T. Washington's school. Colonel William H. Walcott, commander of the Tuskegee Institute Cadet Corps, stationed these Black militants about the building, along the highway, and across the access routes, allowing his reserves to remain nearby in the countryside, ready to speed in if trouble broke out."

After the parade, both sides dug in for trench warfare. By this time, President Moton had changed his tactics. In a desperate attempt to maintain both his integrity and his institution, he organized a flanking operation while maintaining a public silence. His silence disconcerted some Northern Blacks who charged in Northern newspapers, Albon Holsey wrote, that Dr. Moton was "an `Uncle Tom' in the South and a bold advocate for the rights of the race in the North." But Moton, unknown to his critics, was working behind the scenes, deploying his agents and communicating, sometimes secretly, with Veterans Bureau Director Hines. Finally, in August 1923, he broke his public silence, telling a national convention of the National Negro Business League that he was unswervingly committed to the employment of Black nurses and doctors at the hospital.

"I have steadfastly and unswervingly taken that position from the beginning and have said that by every right of sentiment and justice our physicians and nurses should have the opportunity to serve in that hospital, and I have made this assertion where it would mean most; namely, before the Superintendent of the Veterans Hospital at Tuskegee, the Director of the Veterans Bureau in Washington, and before the late lamented President W. G. Harding himself. I stand on that position today and there is no man living who can make me change it, and there is no force on earth that can make me surrender it."

Moton and his ideals prevailed. In August, six Black doctors were assigned to the hospital. By July 1924, one year after the Ku Klux Klan parade, the United States Veterans Bureau Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama, was controlled and administered by a Black staff of 21 doctors and dentists, headed by Dr. Joseph H. Ward of Indianapolis. This was, more than anything else, a tribute to the tenacity and political skills of Moton. No one understood this better than W.E.B. Du Bois, a sometimes critic of Moton, who said in a Crisis [magazine] editorial that Southern Blacks had "yielded and yielded and yielded [until] at last they stood with their backs to the wall."

At that point, Du Bois said, Moton and Tuskegee Institute "could not yield, neither to threats, to punishment nor to death. And the White cowards threatened. They promised murder and disgrace; they used every scheme to make Moton yield. And Moton wavered, hesitated--and stood. Stood firmly and calmly with his back to the wall. He and the Negro world demanded that the Government Hospital at Tuskegee be under Negro control. Today, at last, it is."

For this achievement, and for an exemplary example of grace under pressure, Robert Russa Moton, the second president of Tuskegee Institute, was awarded the Spingarn Award in 1932--eight years before his death on May 31, 1940.

Robert Russa Moton, second president of Tuskegee Institute, led national fight for employment of Black doctors and nurses at Tuskegee Veterans Hospital. Educator died on May 31, 1940. The NAACP and the National Medical Association played key roles in the struggle.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Johnson Publishing Co.
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