Some years ago, probably in the late 1940s—the news
clipping has no date on it—an 18-year-old woman attending what was then
called Southwest Texas State
Teachers' College in San Marcos was seriously injured in an automobile
accident, suffering a broken pelvis.
She was taken to a hospital, but became despondent, and her attending
doctor decided she should spend her long recovery at home in Hico, 150 miles
away. But the jarring of a long
road trip might cause further injuries.
Some sort of rigid custom-made frame to hold her bones in place was
needed, but where could such a thing be found?
The photo accompanying the article shows the
solution: a sort of cage made of
three or four steel straps attached to a stretcher. The article gives the names of the young woman and the
doctor, but identifies the craftsman who designed and fabricated the frame only
as "the village blacksmith."
Thus encased, she was able to be transported safely to Hico, thanks to
the village blacksmith. Probably
everyone who read the article in the San Marcos local paper knew who the
village blacksmith was. He lived in
a house he built himself, worked in a shop he owned, and had the skills to
construct a custom medical device that today would cost many thousands of
dollars to make. Why, then, was
the newspaper so reticent about giving his name? We can only speculate at this point, but I can think of one
good reason. Ulysses Cephas was
black.
Mr. Cephas was born in San Marcos in 1884 to Joe and
Elizabeth Cephas, both former slaves.
Joe was a blacksmith, and Ulysses followed in his father's
footsteps. Around 1909, Ulysses
had acquired enough skills to obtain a certificate in Artistic Horseshoeing,
and that was the extent of his formal education. He married and built a small, sturdy house in the black
section of San Marcos. San Marcos,
along with the rest of Texas back then, was a segregated society. Blacks could live only in the black
section of town. Blacks could sit
only in the black section of movie theaters, if the theater happened to have
such a section. It was a common
sight to see hotels, restrooms, and even water fountains labeled with signs
such as "For Whites Only" or the less direct but just as effective
"We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone."
Mr. Cephas, if he did not embrace these restrictions,
at any rate lived within them. He,
along with the rest of the black community, endured the rise of the
white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. After some Klan doings that were so bad they drew the
attention of the local law authorities, the police asked Mr. Cephas if he could
identify certain horseshoe prints left at the scene. Mr. Cephas was able to connect the prints with one of his
own customers, which led to an arrest of the culprit. Even the Klan came to "Boots" Cephas for
horseshoes.
By 1933, Mr. Cephas had saved enough to buy the
blacksmith shop he worked in, while supporting his five children. As if that wasn't enough, he became
active in the First Missionary Baptist Church and helped found the San Marcos
Independent Band. But he kept busy
working in his shop, as pages from his account book from 1944 attest. They include things like repairing
wagon wheels, drilling holes in iron plates, welding a battery box for the
local phone company, and renovating pieces of farm equipment for local
farmers. By that time, his shop
was what we would term today a general metal fabrication facility, and his
reputation for being able to deal with almost any problem was what led the
young woman's doctor to him when the special frame was needed.
There is a photo of Mr. Cephas at work: a sturdy, overalls-clad man caught in
the midst of swinging a heavy hammer—an engineer's hammer, is the technical
term. Along with the photo, another
news article quotes him as saying that when he passes from the scene, there
won't be anyone to replace him.
Young people these days aren't interested in the hot, heavy work of
blacksmithing, he says. This was
well before air conditioning was installed in most small-town businesses, let
alone residences or blacksmith shops.
Mr. Cephas died in 1952, with $10,000 in the bank,
rental property in hand, and owing only a keg of nails. His house stood vacant for years until
the City of San Marcos, prompted by those interested in black history, used
federal funds to renovate it and turn it into a multi-use space for things like
art classes, which is how I found out about the house and Mr. Cephas's story—my
wife was attending an art class that I visited last Friday. Artifacts from his life and work are on
display there, and the house itself is a testimony to the skill he brought to
his work—the original door and doorknob from the 1920s are still in use.
Ethical exemplars are people whose professional conduct
goes beyond the call of duty to the point where they can be held up as examples
of how to do it right. Mr.
Cephas's skin color and birth date barred him from any realistic hopes of gaining
an engineering education. Most of
the few colleges open to blacks back then had no engineering schools, and even
if they had, the need for tuition money was an obstacle that few black students
could overcome. So he took his
certificate in artistic horseshoeing and taught himself everything else he
needed to know to serve the community of his birth, even when it turned on him
viciously as the KKK did. His
unique skills allowed him to be prosperous in a modest way, and he gave back in
terms of service to his church and to the citizens at large who enjoyed the
music he and his friends played at special events. In his life of integrity and service, he showed how a
professional—one with specialized knowledge—can use this knowledge responsibly
to make the world a better place.
That is what engineering should be all about, and though he lacked the
usual academic credentials, I salute Ulysses Cephas as one who embodied in his
life and work the true spirit of engineering.
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