and Ku Klux Klan members searched his house in search of relatives after local newspapers announced that cotton prices had plummeted. Early education In 1911, he was enrolled at the Brick House School in Epworth, a Baptist-sponsored school. He then transferred to the High School Department of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. He graduated in 1916, aged 22 as its valedictorian. In high school, teachers often let Mays instruct parts of the mathematics curriculum to students in exchange for extra credit. He won awards for debate and mathematics. A teacher at the school had told Mays to seek graduate school at the University of Chicago as he thought the school would best nurture Mays' intellect. However, before attending graduate school Mays needed to seek an undergraduate education. His relatives and teachers forced him to attend a Baptist university–the Virginia Union University. He grew weary of the violence against blacks in Virginia so he sought the guidance of his academic advisors at Virginia Union. They advised him to look into schools in the North as they were typically seen as more prestigious, challenging, and prominent than those of the South. Four professors at the university had attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and urged Mays to apply. However, its exacting standards prohibited him from attending. After a year more in Richmond, Mays elevated his grades to the top of his class and wrote personally to Bates president George Colby Chase. Chase granted him a full financial aid package and boarding upon hearing his story and reviewing his academic background. Virginia Union's president warned him that studies at Bates would be "too hard for a colored boy" and that he should stay in Virginia. Mays ignored his warnings and enrolled in 1917, aged 23. While at Bates he felt pressure to compete with "Yankees at the Yankee level" which drove him to dedicate him to his studies. He would write in a diary: "Yankee superiority was the gauntlet thrown down. I had to pick it up." Working to midnight weekly and arising at 4 AM, Mays excelled at Greek, mathematics, and speech. Although he would experience little racism in college, upon seeing The Birth of a Nation in a local cinema, the crowd cheered for the white slaver which frightened Mays. In college, he was captain of the debate team, played on the football team and served as the Class Day