Breaking Barriers: The First Ladies of Education
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2021
    [artist] => DeWitt S. Williams
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    [titleId] => 14439463
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    [language] => ENGLISH
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    [title] => Breaking Barriers: The First Ladies of Education
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    [synopsis] => Three black women shattered the academic ceiling at all-white Ivy League institutions a century ago. The trio of Sadie Mossell (Alexander), Georgiana Simpson, and Eva Dykes faced massive obstacles to do the impossible: become the first black women to earn PhDs.

Sadie Tanner Mossell entered the University of Pennsylvania at 17-years-old in 1915.

"Not one woman spoke to me in class or when I passed one or more than one woman on the walks to College Hall or the Library," Sadie Mossell said. "Can you imagine looking for classrooms and asking persons the way, only to find the same unresponsive person you asked for directions seated in the classroom in which you entered late because you could not find your way?"

Blacks were, prohibited from eating in cafeterias on campus, and restaurants nearby also refused them. Mossell appealed to Penn's president for blacks to be, allowed to get warm meals in the cafeteria. He said he could not help her.

Instead of discouraging her, though, this resistance only seemed to strengthen Sadie Mossell's resolve. "Such circumstances made a student either a dropout or a survivor so strong that she could not be overcome, regardless of the indignities." Mossell only saw one way to a degree: "I knew well that the only way I could get that door open was to knock it down."

And, knock it down she did. Mossell completed her B.S. with honors in three years, and the next year earned an M.A. Sadie Mossell was awarded a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania on June 15, 1921.

Georgianna Simpson was likely, born right as the Civil War ended. Her parents had been, enslaved in Virginia and could not read or write. Yet Simpson, decided to pursue a career in teaching. Captivated by German culture, in 1896 she went to Germany to study the German language. In 1900, Simpson attended summer school at Harvard University. She would be in school for the next 21 years.

Simpson enrolled at the University of Chicago with a major in German Philology in 1906. Her presence at the Ivy League institution created a scandal when five white female students left the dorm in protest of a black person staying there. The school president demanded that Simpson move off campus. Simpson had to comply. Her expulsion from campus would be the first of a nasty pattern of racism toward her at the school.

Simpson was in France in 1914 when World War I broke out, and because she was studying German at the time, was later, suspected of being a German spy. But, Simpson kept focused on schoolwork. In 1911 she earned her Bachelor's, followed by a Master's in 1920.

On June 14, 1921, Georgiana Simpson received her PhD in German Philology, cum laude, from the University of Chicago. She was 56-years-old.

Eva Beatrice Dykes was, accepted into Radcliffe College in 1915. Known as the "woman's Harvard," Radcliffe was adjacent to the illustrious Harvard, which was a university for, by, and of, privileged white men. Although women were, prohibited from attending Harvard, its male professors delivered the same lectures to women at Radcliffe.

Dykes had earned a Bachelor's in English, summa cum laude, at Howard University, but because it was a black school, Radcliffe did not acknowledge the credits. Dykes had to do a second undergraduate degree at Radcliffe.

Like Simpson, Dykes could not stay on Radcliffe's campus. She found a room in the nearby Cambridge. Undaunted at these racial slights, Dykes plunged into her studies. In two years, she earned her second Bachelor's, magna cum laude.

Dykes frequented the Library of Congress for her research, but was not able to dine at the cafeteria there because she was black. She brought a bag lunch and ate at one of the capital's nearby parks.

Dykes completed and successfully defended a 644-page dissertation on the English poet Alexander Pope in March 1921. By doing so, she became the first of the trio to complete the requirements for a PhD, but marched down the aisle.
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