Christine M IrwinHistory of Higher

EducationSHU Graduate College

March 9, 2015

The African American Women in Higher Education

“Education is the most powerful weapon whichyou can use to change the world.”

—Nelson Mandela

Overview

Brief History in Higher Education

The Seven Sisters Colleges

Those who rose above

The “unwritten rule”

Brief History of Women in Higher Education

18th century push Women wanted to study like the

men Women wanted to learn and

apply what was learned Denials – sex and race Worries about women overtaking

male population

“We don’t want to be mixing the ‘immature’ male with the woman of a

‘marriageable age’”

~President EliotHarvard University, 1869

Studer-Ellis, 1995

Seven Sisters Colleges

Wellesley College Radcliffe College Smith College Mount Holyoke College Bryn Mawr College Vassar College Barnard College

• “Try not to have a good time . . . this is supposed to be educational.”

~Charles M Schultz, cartoonist

Wellesley College

Founded in 1875, in Wellesley, Massachusetts by Henry Durant, a Harvard graduate.

Harriett Alleyne Rice, first African American graduate, 1887 Earned medical degree in 1893 Served in France during WWI – American Red Cross had

refused her membership based on her color• Based on an alumni questionnaire asking if she had any handicaps with

her degree in the working world . . . “Yes! I am colored which is worse than any crime in this God blessed Christian country! My country (100%) tis of thee!”

~Harriett Alleyne Rice, 1937

Radcliffe College

Originally known as the Harvard Annex Founded in 1879, in Cambridge, Massachusetts by

the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women.

Alberta Scott, first African American woman to graduate, 1898

Per the request of Booker T Washington, Scott taught at the Tuskegee Institute

Died in 1903 – aged 27 years.

Smith College

Founded in 1868, in Northampton, Massachusetts by a wealthy single woman, Sophia Smith.

Otelia Cromwell, first African American graduate, 1900

1910 – master’s degree from Columbia University; 1926 – PhD in English from Yale University.

Taught her entire career in Washington, D.C. to the black youth.

Otelia Cromwell Day is an annual slate of workshops, lectures, films and entertainment held to honor Smith's first African American graduate. The first Otelia Cromwell Day was held in 1989 in an effort to provide the college community with an opportunity for further education and reflection about issues of diversity and racism.

Mount Holyoke College

Founded as a women’s seminary in 1837 in South Hadley, Massachusetts by Mary Lyon; became a college in the 1890s

Martha Ralston, first African American graduate, 1898 College did not know Ralston was black until she arrived

Bryn Mawr College

Founded in 1885 by Orthodox Quakers in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Enid Cook, first black graduate, in 1931

Earned PhD in bacteriology from the University of Chicago in 1937

Vassar College

Founded in 1865, in Poughkeepsie, New York, with money given by Matthew Vassar

Anita Florence Hemmings, first African American graduate, 1897 School didn’t know she was colored until almost the time for

graduation – very light-skinned colored woman Married a doctor, had a daughter who also graduated from

Vassar – also light-skinned – college did not know she was black based on her application that indicated she was English and French

• “Vassar is the only first grade women’s college in the North which still refuses to admit Negroes. Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke held out long but finally surrendered, although Bryn Mawr still keeps its dormitories lily-white.”

~W.E.B. Du Bois, Crisis, 1932

Barnard College

Founded in 1889 as the “sister” institution to the all-male Columbia, in New York City, New York

Zora Neale Hurston, first African American graduate, 1928

Autobiography written – Dust Tracks on a Road

• “I felt that I was highly privileged and determined to make the most of it. I did not resolve to be a grind, however, to show White folks that I had brains. I took it for granted that they knew that. Else, why was I at Barnard?”

~Zora Neale Hurston

Conclusion

Wellesley: By 1960, 75 black women had attended of which 45 earned bachelor degrees

Radcliffe: By 1950, 56 African American women graduated with undergrad degrees, 37 with graduate degrees

Smith: By 1964, only 69 African American women had attended or graduated Mount Holyoke: 1964, only 39 black women had graduated since 1883 Bryn Mawr – 1960, only 9 colored women had graduated Vassar – only 23 colored women had graduated by 1960 Barnard – no records were kept to indicate how many African American women

graduated from this college

References

Graham, P.A. (Summer, 1978). Expansion and exclusion: a history of women in American higher education. Signs, Vol 3, No 4, pp 759-773. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173112

Perkins, L.M. (1997). The african american elite: the early history of african american women in the seven sister colleges, 1880-1960. Harvard Educational Review, 67(4), 718-756. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/212298287?accountid=28644.

Perkins, L.M. (1998). The racial integration of the Seven Sister Colleges. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 19 (Spring, 1998), pp. 104-108. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2998936

Studer-Ellis, E. (1995). Springboards to mortarboards: Women’s college foundings in Massachusetts, new York, and Pennsylvania. Social Forces, 73(3), 1051. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/229870285?accountid=28644

Questions & Discussion