Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An intellectual History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction:
"This Right to Grow": Higher Education as both a Human and Civil Right


Part One - Educational Attainment
1.  "A Plea for the Oppressed": Educational Strivings, Pre-1865
2.  "The Crown of Culture": Educational Attainment, 1865-1910
3.  "Beating Onward, Ever Onward": A Critical Mass, 1910-54
4.  "Reminiscences of School Life": Six College Memoirs
5.  "I Make Myself Heard": Comparative Collegiate Experiences (HBCUs and PWIs)
6.  "The Third Step": Doctoral Degrees


Part Two - Intellectual Legacy
7.  Research: "The Yardstick of Great Thinkers"
8.  Teaching: "That Which Relieves Their Hunger"
9.  Service: "A Beneficent Force"
10.  Living Legacies--Black Women in Higher Education, Post-1954

Black Women in the Ivory Tower chronicles Black women's struggle for access to higher education and presents historic philosophies of influential scholars. Part One, an educational history, begins in 1850, when Oberlin conferred the first college diploma upon Lucy Stanton and continues through the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Part Two, an intellectual history, presents Black women's philosophies of higher education between Anna Cooper's 1892 A Voice from the South and Mary McLeod Bethune's 1955 "Last Will and Testament." This story reveals how Black women demanded space as students and asserted their voice as educators, contributing in significant ways to higher education in the United States.