Black Graduates of Radcliffe: 1898 to 1950

from the
THE HARVARD COLLEGE
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROGRAMS NEWSLETTER
February 2003

With an eye on her career goal as a broadcast journalist, senior Angela Freeburg honed her investigative skills last summer examining the lives of black women at Radcliffe from 1898 to 1950.  In spite of a wealth of pictures, documents, and interviews in the Schlesinger Library, no one had really written about both the attitudes of Radcliffe’s adminstration towards blacks and how they affected the experiences of black women at Radcliffe.  Not surprisingly, her focus evolved over the summer and fall. 

“I hoped to learn how race affected the relationship Radcliffe’s black students had with their white peers and teachers, and how race and gender influenced the career paths of these students.  And I found stories, letters, and speeches by and about black women – great material, ” Angela exclaims.  “Besides the students themselves, the speakers were black luminaries of their day, Booker T. Washington, Mary Church Terrell, and others.” 

Much of the correspondence took place between Mary Hundley Gibson, Radcliffe ’18, and Le Baron Russell Briggs, the second president of Radcliffe.  Revered as a popular professor and dean at Harvard, Briggs contributed to the Cambridge Urban League and Tuskegee Institute, and counted among his colleagues black Harvard alumnus, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, whom Briggs held the highest esteem and who served as the Assistant Superintendent of Public Schools in D. C.  When he heard Bruce describe Gibson as “without doubt the most gifted and promising girl of her age that he has ever known,” he helped Gibson make her way to Radcliffe and then became a source of constant support and encouragement, even helping her to become a teacher afterward.  He always answered her requests for letters of recommendation and repeatedly wrote to well-know blacks and whites on her behalf, including Moorefield Storey, the NAACP’s first president.  “While hundreds of pages praising Briggs reside in Harvard University libraries,” Angela added, “his effort to help blacks is only found in his private correspondence in the Schlesinger Library and Harvard Archives.”

“Now I’m searching the Harvard archives for hints about Presidents Elliot, Lowell, and Briggs’ attitudes towards blacks.  I’ve discovered Radcliffe’s unwritten policy of discouraging black students from living in the dorms that was enforced, with few exceptions, until as late the 1940’s. 

“The topic of my thesis is still not crystal clear, but I will focus on Radcliffe’s history during the presidency of Briggs from 1903 to1923.  These were tumultuous years for blacks,” Angela notes, “when lynchings were on the rise and civil and political rights were denied to blacks in the South.   Several talented young women came to Radcliffe in hope of becoming teachers, scientists, and lawyers.  They were temporarily able to escape the violence and discrimination that plagued most black communities, especially in the South.” 

Of the early black graduates of Radcliffe, Angela discovered, “Most of these pioneering women sought to attend schools of higher education because of their love for learning and esteem for academic success.  Upon graduation the vast majority of these black Ivy League educated women devoted their time, energy, wisdom and talents to help their poor, uneducated brothers and sisters living in the segregated South.”

Freeburg worked with two faculty advisors on her research.  Susan E. O’Donovan, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies and History, directed her research over the summer.  “She was invaluable in helping me figure out exactly what I wanted to know about the early black graduates and in maintaining my passion for the research.” Teaching fellow, Linda Prince, is supervising her thesis because “she knows more about blacks in Boston than anyone else,” according to Angela.  She adds, “Staying in Cambridge for the summer would not have been possible without the summer grants I received.”

Angela received a Carol K. Pfortzheimer Student Fellowship for study in the Schlesinger Library as well as a grant from the Harvard College Research Program (HCRP).    Her HCRP grant was made possible by a generous gift from Martin and Marion Kilson to support a student’s undergraduate thesis research in African or African American Studies.