From BSU to Baptist Bishop: one alum's story of perseverance
N-L: Why did you want to go into medicine?
DM: It had been a lifelong ambition. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. That was in the back of my mind up until my calling to ministry … I wanted to be in a helping field where I am saving people but also wanted the prestige. But when I went to Hopkins, of course, premed students had to take calculus their freshman year. I had never even heard of calculus. Here I was sitting in the class as one of my classmates was going through the textbook pointing out errors the author had made and I was hearing for the first time the word calculus. The first year was a real struggle.
N-L: What was one of your happiest moments at Johns Hopkins?
DM: My first-year class I took in world history. The professor there was such a magnificent teacher ... My other was my introduction to Jeb Maguire, who then was chaplain at Hopkins, and a long term social activist.
N-L: What was one of your most memorable moments at Johns Hopkins?
DM: ...First, my attempt to get a haircut at the Hopkins campus and to be told by the barber that he didn't cut monkeys' hair. The second most memorable was actually the day the Black Student Union ... being integrated with African-Americans from Compton State Teacher's College which was then Morgan State. Coming and seeing that number of African-Americans on campus meeting in an atmosphere of peace and unity, but being perceived as a threat by the Hopkins community.
N-L: How did you help found the Black Student Union, what were the challenges you faced and how did you resolve them?
DM: First of all, there was no one person who founded the Union. It was a group effort that came out of our joint pain ... out of our frustration of not having a place where we could be black and not feel that we were threatening other folks. Secondly, it was to have a sense that there were other African-Americans that, if we needed them, would come on a moment's notice ... I did not suffer in the same way that many of the African-American students on campus because I lived at home but it made me almost dichotomous in my own personality. I had to be one way on the Hopkins campus with the predominantly white community and I had to act an entirely different way when I went home in Reservoir Hill.
DM: It had been a lifelong ambition. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. That was in the back of my mind up until my calling to ministry … I wanted to be in a helping field where I am saving people but also wanted the prestige. But when I went to Hopkins, of course, premed students had to take calculus their freshman year. I had never even heard of calculus. Here I was sitting in the class as one of my classmates was going through the textbook pointing out errors the author had made and I was hearing for the first time the word calculus. The first year was a real struggle.
N-L: What was one of your happiest moments at Johns Hopkins?
DM: My first-year class I took in world history. The professor there was such a magnificent teacher ... My other was my introduction to Jeb Maguire, who then was chaplain at Hopkins, and a long term social activist.
N-L: What was one of your most memorable moments at Johns Hopkins?
DM: ...First, my attempt to get a haircut at the Hopkins campus and to be told by the barber that he didn't cut monkeys' hair. The second most memorable was actually the day the Black Student Union ... being integrated with African-Americans from Compton State Teacher's College which was then Morgan State. Coming and seeing that number of African-Americans on campus meeting in an atmosphere of peace and unity, but being perceived as a threat by the Hopkins community.
N-L: How did you help found the Black Student Union, what were the challenges you faced and how did you resolve them?
DM: First of all, there was no one person who founded the Union. It was a group effort that came out of our joint pain ... out of our frustration of not having a place where we could be black and not feel that we were threatening other folks. Secondly, it was to have a sense that there were other African-Americans that, if we needed them, would come on a moment's notice ... I did not suffer in the same way that many of the African-American students on campus because I lived at home but it made me almost dichotomous in my own personality. I had to be one way on the Hopkins campus with the predominantly white community and I had to act an entirely different way when I went home in Reservoir Hill.
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