Chapter 61: Women's Leadership in Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Gaetane Jean-Marie

Women's leadership in historically black colleges and universities For more than a century, African American women have been participants in creating access to educational attainment of blacks and improving the material conditions of the black community. The relatively little-known history of African American founders of institutions and their contributions are not well publicized and acknowledged (Wolfam, 1997). Pioneering African American educators, such as Lucy Laney, who founded the Haines Normal School in Atlanta in 1866, and Anna Julia Cooper and Rosetta Lawson, founders of Frelinghuysen University in Washington, D.C., in 1906, are located in historical records but rarely mentioned. Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904, is well known for her political connections to Eleanor Roosevelt rather than for founding a college (Wolfam, 1997). Black women's heightened commitment to racial interdependence after the Civil War was a formidable cause that propelled many to enter ...

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