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October 1993 | Volume 44, Issue 6
Bessie
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
I had always dreamed I would become a medical doctor, but I ran out of time and money. I was in my late twenties already, and I would have needed a few more credits to get into medical school. I was worried that by the time I earned the money and took those classes, I’d be too old.
My brother Harry was a dentist, and he was going to see if I could enroll at New York University, where he had graduated. But this was in 1918, and New York University would not take women in its dentistry program. Instead I enrolled at Columbia University. This was in the fall of 1919. There were eleven women out of a class of about one hundred and seventy. There were about six colored men. And then there was me. I was the only colored woman!
Most of the students at the dental school were selfassured city folk, and their families were paying their tuition. I never had the luxury of focusing completely on my studies. I always had money on my mind. My brothers were having the same difficulty, so they all worked their way through college as Pullman porters, which was one of the few jobs a Negro man could get. Hubert used to joke that he had earned an M.B.C. degree—Master’s of Baggage Carrying.
It was always harder for a Negro to get work than a white person. Even the street merchants of Harlem, in those days, were mostly white. There were certain companies that were nicer to colored people than others. For instance, everybody knew that Nestlé would hire Negroes, but Hershey wouldn’t. I used to walk through Harlem and scold any Negro eating a Hershey bar. Usually they would stop eating it, but sometimes they thought I was crazy. I do not allow Hershey candy in my home to this day.
As a woman you couldn’t be a Pullman porter, and I refused to work as a maid for white folks. So in the summer I would go with my little sister Julia, who had come up from Raleigh to study at Juilliard, to look for factory jobs. And you know what? They would want to hire Julia because she was lighter than me. But we made it clear it was both of us or neither of us, and sometimes we’d get the job.
One time, we were waiting on line to get factory work and this white man tried to give me a break. He said, “Oh, I see. You are Spanish.” This was supposed to be my cue to nod my head, since they’d hire you if you were “Spanish.” But this made me furious. I said, “No, I am not Spanish. I am an American Negro! ” I turned and walked out of there, and Julia followed me.
I studied very hard in dentistry school. My