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The life of David McDonogh 1844, who attended Lafayette with brother Washington McDonogh, has received increased interest since his story resurfaced in 1980, when it was recounted in a College publication. The brothers came to the College from Louisiana – a fact made all the more remarkable considering that at the time, they were slaves.
On Saturday afternoon in the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights auditorium, Diane Shaw, special collections librarian and College archivist, discussed the story of McDonogh and his brother, and the journeys they took, Washington to the African colony of Liberia, as a missionary, and David to a successful career as a physician in New York City.
The McDonoghs began attending Lafayette in 1838 at the behest of John McDonogh, a wealthy slaveowner in Louisiana with dreams of sending the brothers to the Liberian colony in Africa as missionaries. Describing John McDonogh as a pious man opposed to slavery, Shaw noted he nonetheless believed that blacks had no place in the same country as whites.
That David and Washington were at all prepared for the rigors of college does indicate John McDonogh’s comparatively progressive attitude on race. Particularly after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, it was illegal throughout the South to educate slaves. In a letter that Shaw read to great humorous effect, John McDonogh notes the existence of the law and feigns ignorance of how the two men gained their knowledge.
Disingenuity aside, John McDonogh commended both David and Washington’s worthiness of a college education to prepare them for Christian missions work, likening them to presidents Madison and Monroe respectively, further adding that David had the potential to be like St. Paul to his people.
The reception the two men received at Lafayette is not a high point in the College’s history. Although they attended recitals with their classmates, they were segregated in every other way. Their quarters were removed from those of their white peers, professors educated them separately from the white students, and when they had to be seated with other students, it was always to one side.
“The stigma of their recent servitude was the overreaching factor in how they were treated,” said Shaw.
Washington McDonogh had been in the College’s preparatory program for three years when he received word he was to head to Africa on the Mariposa with 79 other former slaves of John McDonogh’s. He remained in Liberia the rest of his life. In a letter some years later to his former owner, he said that he would like to see him again but would never consent to return to America because he knew that he could never be free there.
David McDonogh in the meantime remained at Lafayette, where he continued a classical course of study and became interested in medicine. In 1844, he voiced his opposition to going to Liberia and declared his intent to become a doctor.
The split between David McDonogh and his former owner was a bitter one, if the correspondence that survives is any indication. For his part, John McDonogh strongly rebuked David for ingratitude and for wasting John McDonogh’s money by refusing to go to Africa. In a letter of his own, David McDonogh said that he had come to the conclusion that, with a few possible exceptions, white people were not worth the respect they felt was their due.
“I think he became a very angry man in some ways,” said Richard Koplin ’64, who joined Shaw in her research. Koplin, incidentally, is a physician at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary – the very hospital where David McDonogh once worked.
David McDonogh ultimately succeeded in his quest for a medical degree. In 1875, when he was 54 years old, he received one from the Eclectic Medical College in New York.
And, five years after his death in 1893, the interracial McDonough Memorial Hospital opened in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York. The added “u” in the hospital’s name may reflect a public break with his former owner.
In recent years, David McDonogh’s story in particular has risen to new levels of prominence. “Transcendence,” a sculpture along High Street near Skillman Library, stands in testimony to David’s triumphs over the endemic racism of his time, and the college has celebrated his status by creating the McDonogh Network for black alumni.
The recognition is late in coming, but appropriate, given the hurdles that McDonogh overcame in the pursuit of his dreams, and the legacy of perseverance and triumph over adversity that he has left not only to the College, but to the nation as well.
“David McDonogh had done his part in showing that freedom could and should be possible in America,” said Shaw.