A Week of Wonders

In 1873, he returned to Washington and began his ministry at St. Mary's.

After retiring from the ministry, Crummell pursued the unheard-of idea of creating an African American scholarly society, the American Negro Academy. Crummell placed a high premium on education as a means for one to end up stronger than one's foes.

If Thursday's dedication ceremony at Banneker and the story of scholarly achievements might have brought a smile to Crummell's face, he also would have been delighted with yesterday's promotion ceremony for eighth-grade students at Blow Pierce Junior Academy. The event took place on familiar turf: the Howard University campus, where Crummell taught from 1895 to 1897.

He would have been struck by the academic achievement of Blow Pierce eighth-graders, most of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. They placed ninth among all 33 D.C. middle and junior high schools -- regular and charter -- in reading and math. Their next step is to a college prep high school in the Friendship Public Charter School system called the Collegiate Academy. This year's Collegiate Academy graduates had a 98 percent college acceptance rate and garnered $7.3 million in scholarships.

No doubt, Vincent Reed and Banneker on Thursday, Blow Pierce on Friday and St. Mary's on Sunday would make Crummell proud.

But then, I would have to sit Crummell down for the last piece of the week's news. "Reverend Crummell," I would say, "the likely presidential nominee for one of America's two major political parties in 2008 is the son of a black African father and a white American mother." The nominee, who is grounded in the American experience, is also a U.S. senator and graduate of a top university and law school.

I don't know this for sure, but Crummell might well then direct my attention to his 1887 essay "The Race Problem in America," in which he wrote, "The race problem is a moral one. It is a question entirely of ideas. Its solution will come especially from the domain of principles. Like all the other great battles of humanity, it is to be fought out with the weapons of truth."

"[Don't] forget that the democratic spirit rejects the factious barriers of caste and stimulates the lowest of the kind to the very noblest ambitions of life."

And that "nations are no longer governed by races, but by ideas . . . that the triumphant spirit of democracy has bred an individualism which brooks not the restraints of classes and aristocracies."

This much I know: Alexander Crummell would be optimistic about today's America.

kingc@washpost.com