Group 6 - Timeline Graded

Presented by: Deddeh F. Jones and Tracy James Drexel University – School of Education EDHE 500: Foundations of Higher Education (Hyland) October 13, 2008

A Hidden Legacy of Achievement (1619 – Present)

African-American Women in Higher Education:

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.

1746 Lucy Terry (above) composes the poem “Bars Fight”, the earliest poem by an African-American which was published in1855.

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 Wheatley. Ø Early to mid-1800s: Slavery ends and a series of home/free schools with the assistance of Freedmen’s Bureau were established to educated the newly freed blacks. 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

Spelman Students in 1895

Ø1862: Mary Jane Patterson is the first AfricanAmerican 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 & Tilloston (1881) Colleges.

First Women Colleges & hbcus  

Ø 1897: Vassar College graduates its first black student, Anita Hemmings, begrudgingly after finding out Hemmings passed for white.

1904 Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (now BethuneCookman College).



1911 The first black woman to graduate from Pitt, Jean Hamilton Walls (B.A. '10)(left front), also became the first to receive a Ph.D. at Pitt in 1938. 1931 Jane Bolin was the first black women graduate of Yale Law and from Wellesley College (1928).

Ø1900s - late 1940s: There were a series of first black women graduates of both HBCUS and predominantly white institutions of . higher education with multi-level degrees and professional fields of study. 

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 Brown’s father, name appears first on the most famous desegregation case in the nation’s history, Brown v. Board of Education.

Ø This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court.

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

Civil Rights Leaders

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 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 Eileen J. Southern

Sylvia A. Boone

Marguerite Ross Barnett

Ruth J. Simmons

Ø1975: Eileen J. Southern is the first black woman 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. 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 an Ivy League institution.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION & beyond Final

Thoughts . . . 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.