Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant - To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe

TO LIVE MORE ABUNDANTLY

TO LIVE MORE ABUNDANTLY

BLACK COLLEGIATE WOMEN, HOWARD UNIVERSITY, AND THE AUDACITY OF DEAN LUCY DIGGS SLOWE

TAMARA BEAUBOEUF-LAFONTANT

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS

ATHENS

TITLE PAGE IMAGE:

Dean Slowe with members of Howard

Universitys Womens League, ca. 1930.

Courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center,

National Museum of American History,

Smithsonian Institution.

2022 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

Designed by Kaelin Chappell Broaddus

Set in 11/13.5 Corundum Text Book by Kaelin Chaappell Broaddus

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Tamara, author.

Title: To live more abundantly : Black collegiate women, Howard University, and the audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe / Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant.

Description: Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021031556 | ISBN 9780820361642 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780820361659 (Paperback) | ISBN 9780820361666 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Slowe, Lucy Diggs, 18851937. | EducatorsUnited StatesBiography. | African American women educatorsBiography. | Women deans (Education)United StatesBiography. | Howard UniversityHistory20th century. | Feminism and higher educationUnited States.

Classification: LCC LA2317.S6185 B43 2022 | DDC 378.009 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031556

FOR MY SISTER,

RGINE,

WHOSE JOY INSPIRES ME

CONTENTS

This project about the educational innovations of Lucy Diggs Slowe, dean of women at Howard University (192237), was sparked by a course I have taught for twenty years. First offered at DePauw University and more recently at Grinnell College, Educating Women takes a historical and topical approach to the contributions of diverse girls and women to primary, secondary, and higher education. My early enthusiasm for the course grew when I realized that I was on a campus with its own notable contributions to the history of coeducation: In the wake of the Civil War, DePauw became one of the first adopters of this contested social experiment. Moreover, in January 1870, four of its new women studentsBettie Locke, Bettie Tipton, Alice Allen, and Hannah Fitchfounded Kappa Alpha Theta, the first sorority for college women in the United States.

Despite DePauws impressive historical place in the ongoing work of inclusion in higher education, more than a half-centuryfifty-five yearspassed between the admission of five white women in 1867 and the matriculation of two Black women, Valeria Murphy and Mattie Julian, in 1922.

In my attempts to find more information about DePauws first Black women students, the campus archivist, Wes Wilson, introduced me to the profession of dean of women. He suggested that I explore the materials of Katharine Sprague Alvord, who served as DePauws dean of women from 1915 to 1936. Although deans of women were the early twentieth-century administrators who founded the contemporary field of student affairs, I had never heard of them. Moreover, despite Alvords professional charge to attend to the personal growth of women students and the overlapping of her tenure with the undergraduate careers of Murphy and Julian, I found little about those women of color in the deans papers. The absence of attention to these two pioneers alerted me to another significant fact: the whiteness of the deaning profession in its advocacy of the holisticthat is, the curricular and cocurriculardevelopment of women students.

It was through my exploration of the history of deaning that I encountered Lucy Diggs Slowe, Alvords contemporary and counterpart at Howard University as well as the first professionally trained African American dean of women in the United States. Slowes was a name that I had come across on the periphery of other research projects. Within a few weeks, however, it became clear to me that she was an academic foremother whose story was both compelling and prescient.

There is much that draws me to Slowe. She was committed to the specific developmental moment of late adolescence and advocated for an expanded view of collegiate education. She, along with other deans, promoted self-governance, student-led interest groups, leisure activities, athletics, and vocational exploration as complements to the work undertaken in the classroom. I now better understand, and more deeply appreciate, the partnership that faculty should have with student affairs professionals to support our students maturation into socially conscious citizens. I also have learned much from Dean Slowe about the importance of strong convictions, the need for sincere intergenerational and interracial relationships among women, and the possibilities that shared purpose unleashes. In Slowe I see a multifaceted educator whose guiding principle in her teaching and administrative labors was that Black women matter. As a result, she believed that they are worthy of our best efforts, which in higher education should include care, attention to the individual, expansive opportunities, and affirming community. That is, Slowe understood belonging as an institutional responsibility and a prerequisite for students learning and growth. A century later her career offers a powerful vision of Black women thriving in, as well as transforming, higher education.

To have an idea for a book is much different from actually completing it, and my community of support for this project has been extensive. I am indebted to many for their meaningful contributions to the books realization:

Dawn Durante, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press. This project grew and matured under your care of honest feedback and patient encouragement. Thank you for continually seeing the possibilities just beyond my current focus.

Marta Robertson, Elizabeth Stanley, Ilona Yim, Velma Garcia, Ginetta Candelario, Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Janie V. Ward, and Karla Erickson. As my writing family of choice, each of you has sustained this project by providing me with the accountability and reassurance I needed.

The researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women, especially Layli Maparyan, Sumru Erkut, Michelle Porsche, Jennifer Grossman, Linda Charmaraman, Amy Hoffman, and Peggy McIntosh. During my 201314 sabbatical, you provided me with a room of my own as well as wonderful intellectual company. You saw this book well before I could. It is now able to grace your shelves.

Wes Wilson, DePauw Universitys coordinator of archives and special collections. In many ways this project began when you introduced me to the profession of dean of women. Thank you for guiding my first archival forays into this fascinating chapter in the history of higher education.