Richmond Times-Dispatch; Jan-June 1907

[Carthaginian]

"Mama! Look at what I did in school today!"

Lucy looked at the paper her son handed her. She'd taught  him what little she knew: how to read the Good Book, adding and taking away, and what little folk medicine she knew that really worked. Lately, though, he'd started teaching her... multiplying (just like adding, only different), division (she wasn't too good at that, Lucy admitted), and the new words that he was learning. It wasn't unusual for Lucy to steal her son's books and read them by lamplight after he went to bed, hoping to learn enough to keep up with him.

He'd only been in school since September of last year, but already the teachers were praising him. The things that he was showing the most promise in were the ones Lucy understood the least, though- math and science. She thought that 'evolution' was blasphemy, but her son surprised her one day by asking "Mama, if those animals didn't exist, God wouldn't try and fool us by burying bones... would He?" When she responded that the Devil had made the bones to trick men, Joseph came back with "But everybody knows the Devil can't make nothing, Mama... so they gotta be something God made."

Lucy shushed him at that point... but the talk stuck in her head.
Her boy was starting to understand things she knew would forever be beyond her ken. His teachers were saying that he should be sent to a better school soon, because they weren't equipped to teach him anything else. "He's got a lot of potential, Mrs. Stoddard. Perhaps sending him up to Auburn, or maybe Atlanta, you can find people that'll be able to keep teaching him. They have a lot of math and science based studies there, and occasionally even international visitors..."

Lucy thought about it as she got ready for bed...
She'd take Joe up to Auburn tomorrow to see what they thought.

[Carthaginian]

Lucy had wondered why the teachers at Auburn wanted to keep her son for a whole week, but she allowed him to stay there. When she returned, she realized that she had opened a whole new world up for her son... and virtually closed him out of her own forever.

"Ma'am, your son appears to have great potential in mathematics and science. Unfortunately, we do not have programs for someone so young here, and there are no boarding schools in the area that take kindly to Negroes." The professor had hit upon a hard fact of life there... even though there were now Negroes in Congress, it was still hard to get a good enough education to get there without moving out West. "I do have connections that would allow the boy to get the finest of educations... but it would involve him moving to France."

Lucy stopped hearing.
"FRANCE? They gonna send my baby boy to FRANCE? How will I see him? Will he be all right? Thousands of mother's questions flooded her mind... mixed with fear for her son and pride for what he could accomplish. Lucy knew that the decision would be Joseph's, but she made her mind up right then and there.

"Telegraph your friend, Professor... I know I can talk my boy into going."