secretary did not hesitate to accept the second installment of our
tuition.

In conversation with the Hon. John P. Poe he did me the
honor to say that my record is a fair one. I have engaged in
teaching in this state and Virginia for eight years, and from all my
examiners I have received commendation for my ability as an
instructor, and, in Baltimore county, where I am now engaged, I
am among the few teachers who hold first-grade certificates. It
seems that if I were so poor off intellectually some of these
examiners would find out.

The real and the only question underlying this difficulty is
my race and not my intellectual fitness for the study of law. If it
were not for my color there would be no trouble. I shall have
nothing to say about the jurist's statement that "we treat a colored
student as we do a white one." The mere statement itself is enough
to provoke an incredulous smile on the face of every man in
Baltimore. I do not care for my exclusion from the university. I
can find some other place to pursue my studies, but the faculty
does me an injustice and shows the weakness of its own cause
when it charges that my exclusion is for any other cause than my
color.66

Hawkins and Dozier sought to persuade Morgan College to open up a law school so they
could complete their studies. The College set up a committee to see if a law school could be
established "without additional expense to the college."67   Further cold water was thrown on the
hopes for obtaining a legal education in Maryland, when Judge Hugh L. Bond, one of the
trustees of Morgan, wrote to say that Morgan could not afford such a law school.68   Judge Bond
suggested that racial exclusion by the University of Maryland was a violation of its charter and
suit might be brought against it.69     No attempt was made to sue the University, however. Even
if Bond's questionable theory had held up, the University trustees would have moved swiftly for a
charter amendment.

The excluded black students finished their legal education at Howard Law School and
became members of the Baltimore bar. In what must have been sweet revenge for his failure in
the property exam at Maryland, Hawkins subsequently led the successful fight to overturn a
series of residential segregation laws in the state.70 The rising tide of segregationist feeling,
however, left private institutions strictly separate. The faint hope of integration seen in 1887 was
dead. The Law School did not come under state control until 1920. By that time the all white
nature of the school was firmly entrenched.71

H.        The Status of Blacks at the Turn of the Century

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