罗伯特·p·麦迪逊在意大利参加过二战as a proud member of the historic Buffalo Soldiers, the all-African-American unit of the U.S. Army that traces its lineage back to the Civil War. Second Lieutenant Madison was wounded in combat and received a purple heart, but when he returned to civilian life in 1946, eager to resume his education at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland, his application was summarily denied simply because he was black.

几天我ater, Madison returned in his full dress uniform with his purple heart and, shamed and under duress, administrators grudgingly admitted him to the university even though some whispered, “you will never be an architect.”

It was one of the many times that Madison, now 96, was underestimated during a life that created social change—Madison became the first African-American architect in Ohio, only the 10th in the nation, and eventually was named president of the Cleveland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Madison’s career includes numerous milestones, such as working on some of the most important buildings in Cleveland, founding Robert P Madison International (RPMI), which continues to thrive today, and opening the door for minority architects across both business and academia.

“I came along at a time when things were pretty rough, as you could call it,” Madison says. “My mother was the real anchor in our whole life, and my father was trying to get a job in and out. I think that my mother was the one who said, ‘Look, you’re going to have to be twice as good as anybody else,’ and she meant that.”

Madison, a native of Cleveland, was growing up in Washington, D.C., during the Great Depression when he gleaned a formative lesson from his mother.

“We had some pretty difficult times, and I remember we were evicted,” he says. “I went to school in the morning and came back, and all the furniture that we had, all of our belongings, were on the sidewalk. The rain was coming down and it was terrible, but my mother said, ‘The Lord is testing you. He wants you to be strong. This is just a test. You’ll be okay.’ You know what? We believed that.”

回到克利夫兰并回到东技术高中后，麦迪逊接受了他的优势。他在数学方面表现出色。

当麦迪逊与另一位学生并列在开始时获得数学奖时，学校在星期六举行了一场决胜局考试。

“我们俩都参加了一个半小时的考试，我们笑了，我们发现他们说这仍然是领带。就我而言，我认为他们只是不想把它交给我。”麦迪逊说。“那是我意识到，您必须比其他任何人都要获得两倍。”

It would be one of many tests Madison would pass over the course of his career. Madison always wanted to be an architect going back to his earliest youth, even studying how building orientation made the home of his grandmother in Alabama comfortable in the heat despite it not having running water or electricity.

“The amazing thing to me is this all started—try and picture this—in 1928, and a five-year old black child in southern Alabama is told by his mother, after looking at one his school drawings, that he will be architect. And Robert answered, ‘Yes, Mother,’” says Robert Klann, CFO of RPMI.

Madison studied architecture at Howard University, but his education was interrupted by World War II. After the war, he graduated from Western Reserve and got his master’s degree in architecture from Harvard, studying under Walter Gropius. He was granted a Fulbright Fellowship in Architecture and Urban Design to study at the L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he received instruction from Le Corbusier and Eugene Freyssinet.

In 1954, after teaching architecture at Howard University for a year, Madison decided to return to Cleveland. He sought to start his own company, reasoning that the only way to effect the social change he wanted to see was to open an African-American-owned architecture firm to employ people of color.

“Why are we teaching these students architecture, but when they graduate there’s no real place for them to work? And they don’t know anybody in their field? I made it my mission to create a business of my own,” Madison says.

After he left Howard, he worked briefly for the firm of Cleveland-based architect Robert A. Little, originally for free just to get work to get registered in Ohio. When he took the state board examination, he passed the first time. Madison then went on to open the firm that would become RPMI in 1954.

RPMI would become either architect or architect of record for numerous major Cleveland projects, including the Quicken Loans Arena, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (where Madison collaborated with his late friend I.M. Pei), Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Frank Lausche State Office Building and the Carl B. Stokes U.S. Courthouse. Outside of Cleveland, the firm delivered many African Methodist Episcopal churches and international commissions, such as the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal.

“I was simply trying to understand human behavior, that’s my architecture,” Madison says. “Develop a sense of how the design assisted the people, and when they’re happy, I’m happy. We also did a lot of housing for elderly people and low income families, and, boy, what a pleasure it is to see people who never had a chance to even come close to a brand new building live in it for a while and appreciate what it’s like for everything to work as it should.”

多年来，RPMI的业务发展，麦迪逊能够聘请数百名非裔美国建筑师和工程师，该公司成为该地区最著名的预应力混凝土设计师之一。麦迪逊受邀参加Case Western Reserve University的董事会成员。他还是1967年卡尔·斯托克斯（Carl Stokes）选举的主要支持者，他是克利夫兰第一位非裔美国市长。2016年退休后，麦迪逊将公司卖给了他的侄子凯文·麦迪逊（Kevin Madison）和他的妻子桑德拉·麦迪逊（Sandra Madison）和克兰（Klann）。

麦迪逊说：“如果我想看到一件事，那就是我们很少有员工想继续获得研究生学位，并真正登上了最高水平。”“渴望变得伟大，因为无论谁说你不能做到，你都可以做到。这就是我今天给年轻人的建议。”

If you’d like to learn more about the legacy of Robert P. Madison, read his memoir “Designing Victory,” from Act 3 Creative.