The attached column emerged from the mists of time, telling us a story that had long been forgotten. Reading the article, we are able to discern that there once lived an African-American fellow named R.C. Bundy, who was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis – and a great many white folks, and many in the press corps, found this terribly irksome. But young Bundy had an ally in The New York Age, one of the African-American papers of that burg, that wrote:
“There is no reason why Afro-American cadets at West Point and Annapolis [Midshipmen] should not have as fair treatment as those of any other race, and as they have at Yale and Harvard and other leading colleges and universities of the Republic; indeed, they should have a larger measure of consideration and fair play, as the military and naval schools are maintained at the public expense and every cadet is educated as a pauper, so to speak. Why should these youngsters give themselves aristocratic and dictatorial airs?… We admire Mr. Bundy’s determination to go to Annapolis and take his chances. It is his right. We expect that the proper authorities shall give him proper protection.”
Anticipating a bad time of it, Bundy never showed up for enrollment.
