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My High School Experience
My early school experience was normal with few outstanding memories; but my high-school period was very memorable. All of my elementary and high school education was in the public schools of that small Indiana town. The City was highly segregated which meant that I did not attend a racially-mixed school until junior high school.
One day while walking from class through the parking lot of the high school which I was attending, the choral director of the school choir heard me singing. This was nothing unusual since I always would sing as I walked. The music teacher introduced herself as the director of the high school choir, and invited me to come to her office for a voice test. After that test, I was invited to join the high school choir and that was the beginning of a whole new experience in high school. At that point, high school began to take on a new meaning and relevance.
The neighborhood in which our family lived was racially mixed, and my best childhood friend was a white boy about my age who lived a few doors down the street from our house. We played together; but when we would go the the drug store for ice-cream and other treats, my white friend was allowed to eat his ice-cream cone in the store; but I would have to eat mine outside of the store. This made a very negative impression on me, so when the high school music teacher invited me to join a very close-knit musical group, it opened up a whole new world of acceptance and positive friendships across racial lines.
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I traveled with the high school choir, and was selected to sing with the madrigal singers, a group which sang music in eight parts. This group went on to win first place in the national championship for this style of music. |
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MY STAY IN THE HOSPITAL After graduation from high school, it was necessary for me to enter the orthopedic hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana to have a curvature of my spine corrected. The upper part of my spine was operated on between August and December of 1941, and the lower part of the spine was corrected between January and August 1942. While in the hospital, I learned how to carve designs on jewelry boxes, and I was just learning how to carve shapes when released from many months in a plaster cast with 90% bed rest. At the hospital, I was in a room with two other orthopedic patients and we found out that we could all sing, so we began to harmonize and our singing became a popular place in the hospital for the interns and medical students from Indiana University to come and night and hear us sing. Obviously, medical treatment of spinal deferments was much different in 1940 than it is today; but I left the hospital wearing a plaster cast from my hips to my neck, and after six months, I wore a steel body brace for the first two years at college. I had always wanted to go to college at Purdue University because my father, Orestes Hood, Sr., had gone there; but he had to drop out in 1904 because of the lack of money. I knew that my mother and father did not have any money to send me to a college outside of Terre Haute, my home town. All of my brothers and sisters went to the local college, Indiana State Teachers College at Terre Haute; but the thought of going to the local college never crossed my mind.
While laying on my back in the hospital recovering from surgery on my spine, I began writing letters to every one I could think of asking for help in financing my going to college at Purdue. One of those to whom I wrote was the congressman from the district including Terre Haute, and he replied by informing me a a new law which Congress had just passed which provided scholarship aid for youth who were handicapped. The young physician who had performed the surgery on my spine application that I would never be able to do any heavy work, and this language was sufficient for me to qualify for tuition assistance through undergraduate and graduate school. I was accepted to enroll at Purdue in the fall of 1942, and I entered wearing a body plaster cast from my neck down to my waist. When this was removed several months later, I was fitted with a steal and leather brace which I wore for the next two years while going about my normal activities at Purdue. While in the registration line at Purdue, I was invited by some very enthusiastic young people to visit the Wesley Foundation, which was an organization of the Methodist Church for college students. That organization had its own building and the program was run by an ordained clergyman who devoted all of his time to students. The program had its own building which was a modern chapel in a building which contained meeting rooms, and space for informal group activities. Growing up in a racially-segregated town, and attending a racially segregated school system, I was pleased to find a program from which I was not excluded because of the color of my skin. I was a part of all of the activities in the Wesley Foundation and I am certain that the experiences I had there influenced my to go in to the Christen ministry. One of the extracurricular activities in which I participated at the Wesley Foundation was going with a small group of students out to small churches on weekends in Northern Indiana and leading worship. I was the song leader which grew into my being invited to youth camps in the summer where I would lead the singing. In 1946, Negro students were not allowed to live in West Lafayette, Indiana where Purdue was located. Two white clergymen opened their homes to Negro students, so they could live in the town where the University was located. The Negro females attending Purdue had to live in the town of Lafayette, and each day take the bus to West Lafayette to attend classes at the University. These same two white clergymen were instrumental in founding what the named, International House, in West Lafayette, just across the street from the main University campus. Negro, white and students of all races were able to live there in a cooperative form of living. A house mother was hired to cook, and supervise the facility. The two white clergymen who opened their homes to Negro students and who worked to form International House were quietly forced out of West Lafayette because of their work in behalf of the Negro students. I was deeply impressed by their example. I had never seen such dedication to others, and I am certain that their example was one of the reasons that I decided to enter the Christian Ministry. One of these two clergymen suggested that I apply to Yale University Divinity School to prepare for the ministry. I applied and was accepted to the fall class of 1946. North Central College I graduated from Purdue University in 1945; but it was too late in the school year to enter Yale Divinity School, so I enrolled at North Central College, Naperville, IL., for the purpose of rounding out my college education by taking courses in liberal arts to make up for such courses I had missed in my scientific studies at Purdue. I was a student at Purdue during the second world war, and the emphasis was on science, so I was lacking in liberal arts studies. North Central College was a school where I could take classes in psychology, sociology, and other non-science courses which would round out my educational background. I was only at North Central College for one year; but it was a very inspirational year in which I made many friends, and opened a few doors for future Black students who came to the campus after me. I was the first Black student to enroll at that college; but I did not feel any different being the only student of my ethnic background on the campus. I was received warmly by both the students, faculty and the community. I sang in the choir of one of the local Evangelical and Reformed (E&R) churches, and shared a room with a white roommate in a house across the street from the main campus. One of my enjoyable experiences while at North Central was singing in the College Choir where I made many friends. I used many of my weekends traveling to E&R churches leading worship and leading in the singing. I also did some limited travel with one of the Bishops of the Church, Bishop Muller, leading the audiences in singing, and the Bishop would do the preaching. North Central College awarded me with a Bachelor of Arts Degree; even though I did not go the the College for that reason. I went there to give me greater background for entering Yale Divinity School. In the fall of that year I enrolled at the Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL My first shock when I arrived at the Divinity School on one of the highest hills in New Haven, Connecticut was the simplicity and the beauty of the Yale Divinity School campus. It is located on one of the highest hills in the City, and all of the building are arranged in a quadrangle. When I was shown to my room in one of several buildings, I asked my guide, "where are my roommates?". He responded that I had none; but the whole room was mine. At Purdue, all of the students where I lived shared a study room, and we slept in a common room in the third floor. At North Central College, I shared a room with a roommate, who incidentally, I never got to know, so having a room to myself was a real treat. Most of the rooms in the building in which I lived at Yale were single rooms. As soon as I unpacked my bags, I asked direction to the Black community. I was directed to Dixwell Avenue, which was at the bottom of the hill near the main campus of Yale University. Walking down the crowded and busy street, I saw a lovely little church, and what seem to be a janitor outside of it. I asked him if I could look inside of the church, and once in the building, I was impressed with the simplicity and the beauty of that little church in the midst of poverty. My religious denomination had been African American Episcopal since birth; but this church was Congregational. Back in my home town of Terre Haute, Indiana, there was a Congregational Church; but it was all white, and I had never heard of any Negroes visiting it. I was so impressed with the Congregational Church in New Haven, that I began attending it, and eventually, I began working there as a volunteer.
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