Honorable, Discharged

The U. S. Military Academy at West Point last week let out 64 cadets deficient in studies. At the station, Major General William Ruthven Smith, superintendent of the Academy, bade them goodbye, wished them success. All were still in uniform as they passed through Manhattan on their way home, but newsgatherers had no trouble in singling out the one they were looking for; a tall, broad-shouldered boy of 20 whose face was darker than the dark brown-paper bundle under his arm. He was Alonzo Souleigh Parham, the fourteenth Negro to enter West Point, the eleventh to leave before graduation.

Tactless newsgatherers stabbed with questions. Cadet Parham, more tactful than they, replied: "I got a square deal. I was given very good treatment. The officers were my friends and cadets, too, both from the North and South." Had he been happy? "Well, take any young fellow away from home out where men are men. He's going to be lonesome and homesick sometimes. Some of them resigned." Would he make a racial issue of his failure? "I should say not!"

If he had been at all displeased with his treatment at the Point, the only clue he gave was that, honorably discharged, he was "not particularly disappointed."

Cadet Parham, appointed from Chicago by Negro Congressman Oscar De Priest, entered the Academy last summer (TIME, July 15). Almost at once he fell behind his class in mathematics (algebra and geometry). Once when he was about to resign Congressman De Priest came to see him, urged him to "stick it out." He started special coaching, stopped after a week. His grades in mathematics were so consistently low that his classmates suspected he was "boning foundation" (inviting discharge by failing to work). They felt that, though there was no hazing, no discrimination, he would not have entered the Academy if he had foreseen his position as West Point's lone Negro. They "handed it to him" for never complaining, never showing any but exemplary conduct. Also satisfied that there had been no discrimination was Congressman De Priest. Promising to name another Negro, he asked: "If I don't appoint men of my own race to the Academy, who will? I do not propose to be disloyal. . . ."

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