He initially attended the University of Kansas for two summers, and the only reason he transferred was because Oregon charged only six dollars a quarter for tuition.

As the only Black person attending the University of Oregon or living in the city of Eugene, he faced racial discrimination and struggled to find a landlord who would rent to an African American.

[1][3] After teaching high school in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, Savage joined the faculty of Lincoln University in Missouri in 1921.

[4][5][6][7] After retiring from Lincoln University in 1960, Savage moved to Hawkins, Texas, where he chaired the history and social sciences department at Jarvis Christian College.

From 1966 to 1970, he held an appointment as a visiting professor of history at California State College, Los Angeles, and concluded his career as a researcher at the Huntington Library[3][1] alongside his friend and fellow historian of the American West Ray Allen Billington.