Authors: Karin Tanabe
“That you are, Miss Hemmings,” said Belle, looping her arm through Anita’s. “Come and say hello to my mother and father after we are awarded our diplomas. They remember you and your voice so well from our choir concerts.”
“I will,” said
Anita, and the two ran over to Medora to be placed in the proper alphabetical order.
As Anita stood between fellow seniors Mary Hecker and Rose Heywood, she watched as Lottie approached her, gliding past the beginning of the alphabet, heading to the back near Belle Tiffany. Anita wanted their eyes to meet, just one last time before they were separated for good. Maybe there would be something in Lottie’s expression that showed remorse, or even friendship. Just a glimmer of the old Lottie, thought Anita as her roommate approached, something of the girl that made Vassar come so alive for her. But she didn’t even receive a glance. Lottie walked by her section with her head high, and turned it away from Anita as she moved past. Anita looked down at the wooden floor, embarrassed, as the other girls straightened their spines proudly and prepared to march in the chapel. At that moment she became quite certain that Lottie Taylor would never utter another word to her for the rest of their extraordinary ordinary lives.
After the academic papers were read and Anita had sung an aria from
Le Cid
backed by the choir, President Taylor addressed the gathering on the supreme importance of conservatism. Anita closed her eyes and for a moment thought only of the diploma she was minutes from possessing.
“Avoid the dangers of notoriety, emancipated thought, and forgetfulness of soul,” the president advised as he concluded his oration. “Commune much with the Invisible, seek simple faith, true life, and fidelity to duty. Keep yourselves, and keep the trust.”
Anita squeezed her eyes tighter as the room erupted in applause. She had sacrificed so much for her diploma, more than any other girl present, and had earned what she was about to hold in her hand.
Y
ou’re home. My girl. My graduate,” said Mrs. Hemmings, hugging her daughter as soon as she walked in the front door of the Sussex Street house. “You did it! My smart, smart girl.”
Anita smiled and allowed herself to be hugged again, so soothing were her mother’s plump arms. She had done it. Only five thousand women in America had obtained college diplomas that year, and almost none of them were Negroes. But she was one. She was Vassar’s one.
“Tell me all about your graduation day. What a pity it rained,” said her mother, ushering her farther into the house. “I wish circumstances were different and we had been able to come. Though even if they were, we wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip. But never mind that. I just want to hear about the whole splendid affair. They say rain is good luck. Unless of course you are hungry? You must be, after such a long journey. Let me prepare something for you. Your brother is in Cambridge tutoring, and your father is at work, but—”
“Anita!” came a cry from the stairs. Elizabeth came flying down the crooked staircase and enveloped her sister in a tight embrace, nearly knocking her over.
“Elizabeth, please,” said her mother, laughing.
“Dignified young women do not run down the stairs like horses.” She turned to Anita and put her hand on the back of her hair. “As I was poised to say, Elizabeth is home.”
“Yes, she is,” said Anita, kissing her younger sister.
“Are you staying now? Forever?” asked Elizabeth, her face still pressed into Anita’s shoulder, which sagged a little with fatigue after her journey.
“Not forever,” she replied. “But for now. The short now and the longer now.”
“I’m so glad,” said her sister. “I want to sleep next to you and listen to you exist.”
“All in good time,” said her mother, peeling her youngest daughter off her oldest. “First, I would like to see Anita’s diploma. Is it buried deep in your trunk?”
Anita knew what a relief it was for her mother to have her graduated. Dora Hemmings had survived in a state of controlled panic since Anita had left for Vassar four years earlier, constantly voicing to her family her terror that someone might guess the truth. She was the one who counseled her daughter to always wear a hat, to stay out of the sun, to never act in a way that was unbecoming a lady. Before Anita had left for her freshman year, her mother had cried on her shoulder and said that if someone did guess that Anita was a Negro, it would be because of
her
family—the Logan blood, not the Hemmings. Anita thought of that day as she reached for her mother’s hand, so glad that her years of worry were over.
When Dora eventually released her, Anita opened her trunk and took out the carefully wrapped paper that lay on top. She pulled out her Vassar diploma, walked into the dining room, and laid it on the simple pine table where the family took their meals.
“Here it is!” said her mother with pride, leaning down to examine the black letters. “How formal the writing is. Will you read it to me, Anita? My eyesight is slipping away from me this year.” She bent as close to the paper as she could without her nose touching it and said, “Is it not written in English?”
“It’s in Latin, Mother,” said Anita, pushing away the thought of her lost summer trip. “It’s the custom of the school. But it says I’m a graduate. Do you see my name, there?” she said pointing. “Anita Florence Hemmings. And those words, right under it, indicate that I graduated with honors.”
“With honors,” said Dora, moving her finger across the diploma. “I am so proud of Frederick for graduating from the Institute of Technology, but there’s something different about my daughter being graduated,” she confessed. “My little girl, who I watched study after the rest of us fell asleep. Who can speak different languages and make sense of everything. My Anita, a college graduate.” She wiped her tears before they fell on the diploma. “My own blessed mother was still illiterate when she died. But here you are despite it all, my exceptional child.”
Anita had decided on the train ride home, which she had made with several other Vassar students traveling back to different parts of New England, that she would not say one word to her family about Lottie and what she knew. Now, looking at Dora’s tears of pride, her resolve hardened. This moment was what her mother deserved, she thought. She must never hear about the day her daughter sat in the college president’s office, humiliated and terrified.
When Frederick came home late that evening, he placed his diploma next to Anita’s, and brother and sister stood and examined them together, disbelief on their faces.
“I’m very proud of you,” said Frederick, patting his sister’s hand.
“And I of you,” she replied. “Father told me you already have employment with a chemist in Boston.”
“I do,” said Frederick, smiling as if he were the most surprised of all. “I’ll be working with Henry Carmichael, an analytical and consulting chemist. His office is on Federal Street. Number 176. I found the work with the help of one of the faculty at the institute, a man who was very kind to me. He helped me obtain my three scholarships after I was admitted to the chemistry program.”
“I had a professor who sounds similar,” said Anita, thinking about Miss Franklin.
Frederick left to go upstairs, returning moments later with a slim bound volume that he handed to Anita. “My senior thesis,” he said. “I’m afraid it won’t make much sense to Mother and Father, but perhaps you would like to read it.”
“ ‘The Change That Glucose Undergoes During Fermentation,’ ” Anita read aloud. “Frederick, as hard as I tried, I never became the chemistry prodigy that you are. That was Lottie’s domain—”
“Let’s not talk about her now,” said Frederick, cutting off his sister. “Just read it, even if you don’t fully enjoy it,” he said. “It would make me happy.”
“Of course I will,” said Anita. “My brilliant little brother.”
Anita spent her first few days back in Boston with her family, but on Sunday, as was the custom of the devoutly religious Hemmingses, they walked to the Episcopal church where Anita had worshipped since childhood. It was no shock to Anita, or her parents, that the first person they saw standing outside the door was Mrs. Lillian Peoples, chief gossip of not only the Negro community of Roxbury,
but also that of the Negro community of Boston’s Trinity Church.
“Anita Hemmings!” she shouted, clasping her pillowy hands together as if she were already praying. “And the proud parents! I knew you would all be at church today, I just knew it. I’ve been reading all the newspapers, as I always try to do, and I read about last week’s Vassar graduation ceremony. I said to myself then, this is when the famous Hemmings girl makes her journey home. Vassar’s Negro angel. Come here, Anita, give me a kiss. I want to applaud the most intelligent girl in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Anita prayed silently for Mrs. Peoples to lower her voice, and she knew the rest of the family would be praying, too. The church community of course knew her as Negro, but the white parishioners did not know she had gone off to Vassar, and many were just entering the building as Mrs. Peoples spoke.
“Our Frederick also graduated this June,” said Robert Hemmings. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “A chemistry graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And he’s already found employment with Henry Carmichael on Federal Street.”
“Of course you have,” said Mrs. Peoples, beaming at Frederick, though with a shade less animation. “Such a brilliant family, and the highest honor for the community. Come now, Anita, we must show you off. A graduate! There are girls here in the church who know all about you. Young schoolgirls. And not only do they know about you: they hope to become you. You must speak to them, guide them, shake their hands. Let them worship you as they should.” She turned to Dora. “Perhaps we can have Reverend Donald say a few words about Anita’s triumphant return?”
The Hemmings family stopped as one, a shared panic shooting through them.
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Peoples,” said Dora. “Anita does not need any recognition. And it probably wouldn’t be wise, given the mixed company.” Reverend Brooks had passed away in ’93, and while he had been very familiar with Anita’s education and how she had achieved it, Reverend Donald was not.
“Of course, of course, the mixed company,” said Mrs. Peoples, clearly not caring who her company was as long as she had their attention. Anita Hemmings was her trophy. She took Anita by the arm and marched her inside.
“Lord give you strength,” Dora mouthed to Anita as they watched her go. The family walked in and sat in a pew toward the back of the grand church and observed Anita being guided around by the effervescent Mrs. Peoples. She held up Anita’s hand as if she were a boxing champion.
“A graduate!” they heard her loud voice echo. “And one of us! The Negro who graduated from Vassar College. It’s unprecedented! It’s only happened twice before at Wellesley and never at Vassar until today. Be sure your hearts are welling up with pride for Miss Hemmings, welling up to the point of bursting,” she warned her friends in the congregation, in case they weren’t sharing her immense joy.
“Now you, Miss Mable March,” she said, singling out a young girl sitting in a pew in a starched yellow dress. “Are you going to study hard so you can have the same distinguished fate as Miss Hemmings? These ladies’ colleges don’t open their doors for just anyone. One has to prove oneself the best of one’s race, just as Miss Hemmings did.”
“Yes, Mrs. Peoples,” the girl responded obediently. And that was the chorus that followed, as Mrs. Peoples cross-examined every Negro girl sitting near her about
their commitment to education and to becoming the next Anita Hemmings.
“I suppose it’s all right,” said Robert, pride battling concern on his face. “What is the risk in gossip now that she has graduated?”
Anita wondered if Mrs. Peoples was unaware that she had passed for white at Vassar. She had never told her herself, assuming instead that her parents had, since almost everyone in her Roxbury community knew. But Mrs. Peoples seemed to think that Vassar had willingly invited a Negro into its halls and would happily do so again. Anita decided to let Mrs. Peoples maintain that belief. She made her way back to her family, and Elizabeth moved over to make room for her.
“They have it all wrong,” Elizabeth whispered in her ear. “It’s me who wants to be the next Anita Hemmings.”
“No, Elizabeth. You’re already so much better,” said Anita, squeezing her hand. “Just stay exactly as you are.”
I
t was in late June that Anita decided to prepare for the entrance examination for graduate study in Greek and Latin at New Haven’s Yale University, which had recently started accepting female graduate students. The family agreed that she would live at home in Boston while she studied, since Frederick was moving to his own quarters on Pearl Street, and there would be more room. Anita was to work as a tutor in foreign languages for the summer, as she had done in Boston every year since starting at Vassar. Dora would spend much of the season in Martha’s Vineyard, running her small boardinghouse in the Highlands of East Chop, part of Cottage City, the only town in Martha’s Vineyard where Negroes could buy property. Unlike many of the boardinghouses in the area, Dora’s house did not cater to Negroes, and because of it, she was able to charge a higher rate, a decision she had made with her children in mind. A portion of her wages would go toward Anita’s future schooling.
“As a graduate student,” Anita wrote in a letter to Bessie, whom she had not seen since returning to Boston, “I know I’ll be able to make the journey to Greece and perhaps even Italy. My scholarship to study abroad did not materialize
while at Vassar, but I feel that it will at Yale. And to be even closer to New York, Bessie! Have you and William made the trip together? I imagine you have, with the Harvard football team traveling there so often. I visited in January and fell more in love with it than ever. My trip was made at a time where everything felt so right in my life, and I’ll always associate the city with that rare sentiment.”