Bud faced a barrier even more immediate than racism: money. He had easily gained admission to Howard Medical School, in Washington, D.C., but in an era that predated colorblind scholarships, becoming a physician was largely the province of men whose families could afford to support them in the prolonged fiscal adolescence that was medical school.
How would he pay?
The answer appeared in the form of a tall, thoughtful Rutgers student with a deep, resonant voice. At a regional Phi Beta Kappa meeting in the spring of 1920, Bud immediately recognized the only other Black attendee—Paul Robeson. The two had met briefly once before, but as they spent that evening together in deep discussion, they discovered much in common, including fathers who were ministers, a broad interest in literature and world affairs, and a passion for music.
The equally impecunious Robeson had been accepted to Columbia Law School, and the two of them seized on a plan: Why not perform together as musicians over the summer, making a circuit of the East Coast to earn money for the coming academic year? When the duo went to New York, performing at Harlem’s all-Black cabarets, Bud fell ever more deeply in love with the neighborhood’s vibrant culture. This is how he earned the tuition for his first year of medical school: by singing, playing the piano, and arranging music. Once Bud was ensconced in Howard Medical School, he supplemented his meager funds by working as a campus night watchman. He also economized by living with Pearl in nearby Baltimore.
Once again, Bud excelled in his studies, and free from the wartime obligations that had haunted his undergraduate career, he found time to frequent lectures and salons hosted by intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, a Harvard philosophy PhD who in 1907 had become the first African-American Rhodes Scholar and would later be recognized as the “philosophical architect of the Harlem Renaissance.” Bud gravitated to him first as a mentor and later as a peer. Bud also embraced the back-to-Africa movement of Marcus Garvey, announcing to friends, and later in the 1924 Howard Medical School yearbook, that he planned to practice in Egypt after he finished training. He played intramural football and, more significantly, embarked on a rich literary life, sitting at the feet of Locke and attending the Saturday night salons hosted by the staff of The Stylus, Howard’s literary magazine. There, he forged lifelong friendships with Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, May Miller, and especially his kindred spirit, Stylus editor Zora Neale Hurston. Neither Bud nor Hurston felt the need to confine their writings to works and characters that would “uplift the race,” and neither shied away from rich portrayals of lower-class Black life that many other writers found embarrassingly “primitive.” With their shared literary sensibilities and ambitions, they forged an intimate bond that was to flower when both moved to Harlem after graduation.