Presented by:

Deddeh F. Jones and Tracy James

Drexel University – School of Education
EDHE 500: Foundations of Higher Education (Hyland)
October 13, 2008
(1619 – Present)
A Hidden Legacy of Achievement
in Higher Education:
African-American Women
 CRITICAL Historical events
“According to
W.E.B. DuBois,
black people
achieved something
no other race had
accomplished
coming out of
slavery ---literacy
in 70 years”
(Humphries, 1995).
 Slavery & ABOLITION
Ø 1619: First African slaves arrive in America and access to
higher education was practically nonexistent and illegal.

Ø Mid-1700s: A few blacks managed to learn to read and

write at the risk of severe punishment and even death.
Among these brave souls were Lucy Terry and Phillis
1746
Wheatley.
Lucy Terry (above)
composes the poem Ø Early to mid-1800s: Slavery ends and a series of
“Bars Fight”, the home/free schools with the assistance of
earliest poem by an Freedmen’s Bureau were established to educated the newly
African-American
which was published freed blacks.
in1855.
Ø Late 1800-1900s: A slew of colleges and universities are
established with purpose of educating blacks for the
secondary and post-secondary levels.

1773
Phillis Wheatley (left) becomes the first African American to publish a
book: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
 First Women Colleges & hbcuS

Ø 1833: Oberlin College in Ohio is founded. From

its founding the college is open to blacks and
women.

Ø 1850: Lucy Ann Stanton, a black woman, receives

a certificate in literature from Oberlin College.
Mary Jane Patterson Ø1862: Mary Jane Patterson is the first African-
American woman to receive a full baccalaureate
degree, from Oberlin College.

ØThe 3 historically black female colleges which

were often comparable to the “Seven Sister”
Colleges such as Wellesley, Vassar, and Smith:
§ Barber-Scotia (1867),
§ Bennett (1873),
Spelman Students in 1895
§ Spelman & Tilloston (1881) Colleges.
 College).

First Women Colleges & hbcus

Cookman
(now Bethune-
Negro Girls
Institute for


and Industrial
Daytona Normal

founded the
Mary McLeod Bethune
1904
Ø 1897: Vassar College graduates its first
black student, Anita Hemmings,
begrudgingly after finding out Hemmings
passed for white.

Ø1900s - late 1940s: There were a series of
first black women graduates of both HBCUS
1911
The first black woman to graduate and predominantly white institutions of
from Pitt, Jean Hamilton Walls .
(B.A. '10)(left front), also became higher education with multi-level degrees
the first to receive a Ph.D. at Pitt in
1938. and professional fields of study.
1931 
Jane Bolin was
the first black
women
graduate of
Yale Law and
from Wellesley
College (1928).
 MORRILL’s land-grant ACTs

Ø 1862: Senator Justin Morrill spearheaded a

movement to improve the state of public higher
education throughout the United States, putting an
emphasis on the need for institutions to train
Americans in the applied sciences, agriculture, and
engineering. Unfortunately, his efforts had little
effect on the inclusion of black women.
http://www.collegeview.com/articles/CV/hbcu/hbcu_history.html

Senator Justin Morrill Ø1890: Second Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1890

specified that states using federal land-grant funds
must either make their schools open to both blacks
and whites or allocate money for segregated black
colleges to serve as an alternative to white schools.
As a byproduct of this legislation helped increase the
opportunity for more black female students to attend
colleges and universities in the west especially.
http://www.collegeview.com/articles/CV/hbcu/hbcu_history.html
 BROWN V. TOPEKA (1954)
Ø 1954: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial
segregation in schools is unconstitutional.
“The Little Rock Nine”
"...if the colored children are denied the experience
in school of associating with white children, who
represent 90 percent of our national society in which
these colored children must live, then the colored
child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The
Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot
be equal under segregation."
Dr. Hugh W. Speer

Oliver Brown, Linda Ø This historic decision marked the end of the
Brown’s father, name
appears first on the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme
most famous
desegregation case in
Court.
the nation’s history,
Brown v. Board of
Education.
 BROWN V. TOPeka (1954)

http://www.historicaldocuments.com/BrownvBoardofEducation.htm

Ø Syllabus from the Transcript of Brown v. Board of

Education (1954): “Segregation of white and Negro children in
the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race,
pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation,
denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the
physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and
Negro schools may be equal.”
 CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
As public policy, affirmative action can be dated to President
Lyndon Baines Johnson’s June 4, 1965 address to the
graduating class of Howard University. LBJ intended this
speech as his own Civil Rights Proclamation. He chose his
words carefully, with an eye towards posterity:

"You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying:

'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you
desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not
take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains,
liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race,
saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,'
and still justly believe you have been completely fair….
This is the next and more profound stage of the battle
for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but
opportunity - not just legal equity but human ability -
not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as
a fact and as a result."
http://www.blackcommentator.com/49/49_cover_pr.html
 CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Stated that any business firm,
state or local government,
college or university doing
contract work or receiving
grants from the federal
government must not practice
discrimination based on race,
color, sex or national origin if
Civil Rights Leaders it wished to continue to
receive federal monies
(Brubacher & Rudy, 2007).

This act, signed into law by President Lyndon

Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibited
discrimination in public places, provided for
the integration of schools and other public
facilities, and made employment
discrimination illegal. This document was the
most sweeping civil rights legislation since
 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION & BEYOND
Ø Affirmative action is a policy derived to promote
access to education or employment among the
historically socio-politically non-dominant groups
(typically, minority men or women of all racial
groups).

One Step Forward . . .

Ø 1978: Regents of the University California v.
Bakke rules that race be used as a factor in university
admissions, quotas are not allowed.

One Step Back . . .

Ø2006: In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v.
Jefferson, affirmative action suffers a setback when
a bitterly divided court rules, 5–4, that programs in
Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain
diversity in schools by considering race when
assigning students to schools, are unconstitutional.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION& BEYOND
 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION & beyond

Ø1975: Eileen J. Southern is the first black woman

Eileen J. Southern
tenured as a full professor at Harvard University.
Ø1988: Sylvia A. Boone is the first black woman to
become a tenured faculty member at Yale University.
Ø1990: Marguerite Ross Barnett is named president
of the University of Houston, making her the first
black woman to lead a major university.
Sylvia A. Boone
Ø1995: Ruth J. Simmons is elected president of
Smith College making her the first black woman in
this position at a highly selective liberal arts college.
Ø2001: Ruth J. Simmons becomes president of
Brown University, the first African American to lead
Marguerite Ross Barnett an Ivy League institution.

Ruth J. Simmons
 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION & beyond
FinalThoughts . . .
Ø Despite the progress and extraordinary achievement of African-American
women in higher education, their legacy for the most part has been hidden
and somewhat unacknowledged in the realm of scholarly examination and
research.

Ø “Black women administrators are an endangered species [with] few in

number,” and affirmative action policies failed to solve the problem of
diverse representation in higher education (Hall-Mosley, 1980).


ØYet, there is still hope when the number of African-American women

entering and graduating from colleges and university nation-wide is
increasing astronomically considering the barriers of tokenism and lack of
mentorship.

 references
1. Thomas, Veronica G. & Jackson, Janine A. (2007). The Education of African
American Girls and Women: Past to Present. The Journal of Negro
Education, 76(3), 357-372,524,526-527. 
2. Brotherton, Phaedra (2001). Minority bachelor's degrees on the rise: Number of
African American bachelor's degree holders tops 100,000. Black Issues in Higher
Education, 18(8), 34-38. 
3. Hall-Mosley, Myrtis. (1980). Black Women in Higher Education: An Endangered
Species.” The Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 Higher Education, Psychology,
and the Black American, 295-310.
4. Humphries, Frederick S., (1994-1995, Winter ,). A Short History of Blacks in Higher
Education. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 6 ., 57
5. Schroeder, Ken (1997, April). Blacks in College. The Education Digest, 62(8), 74-75. 
6. Gasman, Marybeth (2007). Swept Under the Rug? A Historiography of Gender and
Black Colleges. American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 760-805. 
7. Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. "Black Women and Higher Education: Spelman and Bennett
Colleges Revisited." The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, The Impact of
Black Women in Education: An Historical Overview (Summer, 1982), 278-287.
8. Histohttp://www.jbhe.com/features/53_blackhistory_timeline.html
9. http://www.nmwh.org/Education/biography_pwheatley.html
10. http://www.collegeview.com/articles/CV/hbcu/hbcu_history.html
11. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of
Education Statistics, 2005 (NCES 2006-030), table 205, data from the Higher
Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), "Fall Enrollment in Colleges and
Universities" surveys, 1976 and 1980, and 1990 through 2004 Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), "Fall Enrollment" survey, 1990, and
Spring 2001 through Spring 2005.