Robert Harold Ogle

    " Robert 'Bob' Ogle attended the public schools in Washington
D. C. From 1901-1905, he was a student at the M Street School. The school was considered one of the finest preparatory schools for African-Americans in the city. Most of the students were children of working class parents. Admission to the school required the successful completion of grammar school. With only 530 seats, it was very competitive. The students had to pay for books and supplies. Ogle was enrolled in a four year liberal arts program and a two year business education program. Students were required to take English, history, algebra, Latin, physics or chemistry. Electives included French, German, Spanish, Greek, history, and other advanced courses including geometry and political economy. Ogle arrived at the end of Robert Terrell's tenure as principal and the beginning of Anna Julia Cooper's as principal. M Street school had a cadet corps and performed often on the White House lawn. After graduation in 1905, Robert Harold Ogle entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

    Ogle arrived in Ithaca and found a place to stay at home of Annie and Archie Singleton at 411 East State Street. Ithaca was a small, neat town of homes and cobblestone streets. Most of the African-Americans in the city knew each other and often socialize. Ogle learned that two years prior, there had been a terrible epidemic of Typhoid fever in the small town which had been passed through the city's water supply. Over 500 persons contracted it and 40 persons died from the fever."

An excerpt from "The Talented Tenth"
by Skip Mason