Transcript Examining Our History: - Serendip Studio's One World

Examining Our History:
Inclusion/Exclusion at Bryn Mawr
… for the “Advanced Education of
Females”
Joseph Taylor directed in his will that his
money be used to erect buildings “for the
comfort and advanced education and care
of young women, or girls of the higher
classes of society.”
Founded in 1885, Bryn Mawr was the first
college in the country to grant a Ph.D.
degree to a woman.
Evelyn Jones Rich ‘54
I eagerly accepted the offer of admission to
Bryn Mawr because I felt that it could
prepare me to fulfill my role in promoting
fundamental changes in our society. I was
on of the first poor, black, full-time resident
students to enter.
I played pinochle with the maids and porters
in Taylor’s basement and bridge with the
girls with whom I lived on campus.
Evelyn Jones Rich
(cont’d)
In the spring of my senior year at Bryn Mawr (1954) the
College rallied to my support when a local restaurant
which I had patronized for four years refused to serve
me and a Negro male escort. Miss McBride believed
that the college’s responsibility to me extended beyond
the campus and embraced the community at large. In
the following months after we won a change in policy
there, teams of Bryn Mawr and Haverford students
tested restaurants along the entire Main Line without
encountering discrimination. This experience is
memorable because the College came through when the
chips were down – quietly, firmly, successfully.
Christine Philpot Clark ‘60
For everyone, I suppose, college is the best and worst of
times. Discovery and challenge, unknown in such sweet
peaks before, certainly characterized my Bryn Mawr
years; but so, too, did the culling and sorting through
whitenesses that I did unconsciously. . . .
Intelligent women in a male-run world make their
confrontations, discardings, choices, and adaptations. At
each stage there is that internal questioning: is this the
issue in which to invest my energy? What will happen to
me, that soft, quiet self I like, if I constantly rant? . . .
Black people simply have to pose these questions more
often.
Chandlee Lewis Murphy ‘63
The national climate and attitudes were different in 1963,
so that my class mates and I experienced problems on
an individual level and felt no particular unity because of
our blackness. It was the era of integration and we were
intent on finding a niche in the college community. The
fact that there was only one Negro per class (we often
joked about being “THE Freshman, THE Sophomore,
etc.”) aided this search for absorption. I personally had
trouble adjusting to the system of maids and porters.
They were older people who addressed me by the title
“Miss”, and whom I called by their first names. Until then
the contrary had been true.
Dolores Miller ‘70
Bryn Mawr has certainly affected my life and I am truly a Mawrtyr,
lantern, owls and all. But there is one thing the “Bryn Mawr
experience” will not change, the fact that as long as my skin is black,
the value of a Bryn Mawr education will not be the same for me as
for a white student. . . .
The important thing for the black Mawrtyr is to keep the “Bryn Mawr
experience” in perspective. One must remember that this is four
years out of a life time, one episode in the lifelong process of
learning and adjusting; the people and situations encountered here
are definitely not a representative sample of what awaits beyond.
SO, with reality lurking in the far reaches of my mind, I enjoy the “Bryn
Mawr experience” . . . Lanterns, owls and all. It’s interesting while
I’m here . . . But I won’t be here forever.
Joanne L. Doddy ‘72
There is no stereotype black student at Bryn Mawr. . . I represented
one of the more moderate elements among black students. The
black “conservative” student – whether a member of a silent minority
or majority, I’m not sure – often must withstand criticism from fellow
black students which ranges from being called a black bourgeoisie
to a white nigger. . . .
As a black “conservative” student, I find myself more useful in t he
background. . . . Those white students who marched with blacks,
worked and lived in schools with blacks, and tried to find out their
own line of thinking in reference to blacks are part of the hope for
the future. There are many white college students who never know
blacks in their youth and whose first exposure to blacks has come
with college. For this reason, I see my part of the black battle as
educating and directing the line of thinking of those whites who are
sincerely trying to understand the way things are.
Mzimeli Moikemisetsi Morris - 2008
The goal of this institution is to challenge women
intellectually and socially. It is Bryn Mawr’s
responsibility to provide access to an education
that is progressive; that not only gets in the room
together . . . But also helps us interact and learn
from one another. Bryn Mawr is definitely a work
in Progress and I fell with more involvement
among students, faculty, staff, and
administrators, Bryn Mawr can meet its potential
as a truly diverse institution.
“Work in Progress”
“Because we are committed to diversity in its fullest sense, we are
responsible as individual and as a community to identify and
confront the aspects of our character, our culture, and the ways in
which we function, which may reflect unconscious remnants of
prejudice. Discussing these complex issues is challenging work
because the involve each of us at a personal, human level. They
demand more than our intellectual, political or ideological
engagement. Conversations of this kind require all of us to be
especially responsible in how we speak, and to keep ourselves open
to learning from one another. But they also require us to take risks,
to share what we are thinking even when we worry we may be
judged for it, and to plow through anger and confusion in search of
understanding. The chance to make a difference here and now on
these questions is a goal worth of women who will become the
change agents of tomorrow and of the staff and faculty who support
their education.
Nancy Vickers
IN CONTEXT
The war years had helped to sharpen Quaker consciences
on matters of race. The relocation of JapaneseAmericans from the West Coast, in response to racial
hysteria, and their placement in virtual concentration
camps had led the AFSC [American Friends Service
Council] to enter a protest and to launch a program of
trying to place the students in colleges and others in jobs
in less prejudiced areas. AFSC staff work in finding
homes and jobs for refugees from Germany had also
taught them lessons in anti-Semitism, and the movement
of blacks into northern cities was making it clear that
patterns of discrimination had to be ended in jobs and
housing. How, then, could Quakers continue to justify
having all white student bodies in some of their schools?
IN CONTEXT (cont’d)
Henry Cadbury had been asking this question for many
years, and slowly change had begun to take place. Bryn
Mawr College had admitted its first black in 1927, and
she had lived with the Cadburys when there was
question about her acceptance in the dorms. The
Oakwood School had followed in 1933, Media Friends
School in 1937, and both Haverford and Swarthmore in
1943. These were still the exceptions, however. It was
only after the April 1944 conference, led by Henry
Cadbury, that the two bastions of Philadelphia
Quakerism, Westtown and George School, were ready
to move, in 1945 and 1946 respectively. After that,
changes came rapidly.
From Let This Life Speak: The Legacy of Henry Joel Cadbury by Margaret Hope Bacon., U of PA Press., 1987