Browse Exhibits (13 total)
Betty Glenn Thomas did not consider herself to be a political figure, despite serving as the first Black teacher in the Oberlin Public Schools in a town that has boasted racial progressiveness since its founding in 1833. The controversy surrounding her hire extended past the initial decision; community members charged the Oberlin School Board with racial discrimination for placing Thomas at Centennial School where she would only teach Black students, and her tenure was up for debate even though the general protocol was that teachers got automatic tenure after three years. The town of Oberlin and historians exploring her legacy today have politicized Thomas’ very existence, which in some ways makes sense given her significant role in the schools and her life-long commitment to civic engagement. Thomas was important and political, but she also had reasons to not explicitly label herself as such.
Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper is an academeic with a long standing research interest in Langston Hughes. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1975. While she was a student Oberlin College, Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper was very involved in the Black Arts Movement. Later, while working at the College, Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper helped advocate for the future Africana Studies Department.
Dr. Caroline Still Anderson was a notable physician and advocate for black women’s health in the late nineteenth century. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1868 at the age of nineteen. She later attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she wrote her graduate thesis on uterine fibroids.
Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole is a scholar who has done work in the fields of education, anthropology, museum studies, and Black, feminist studies. She graduated from Oberlin in 1957 with a degree in sociology and from Northwestern University in 1967 with a PhD in anthropology. In addition to her anthropological research and positions within education, including her ten year presidency of Spelman College, Cole authored and edited several books, received numerous awards and honorary degrees, and holds titles within several boards, conferences, and associations.
Born into slavery in 1837, Fanny Jackson Coppin would graduate from Oberlin College in 1865, the third black woman to do so, and would serve as an African American Advocate and Educator. This serves as an analysis of both the poetry Coppin wrote during the Civil War and of Coppin's legacy in the movement for the rights of African Americans.
Frances Walker-Slocum graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in 1945 with a degree in pianoforte. She went on to have a successful performance career. She returned to Oberlin Conservatory to teach in 1976 and gained tenure in 1979. She was the first tenured Black women professor in the history of Oberlin College and Conservatory.
Mary Burnett Talbert was a radical civil rights activist and leader in the women’s club movement Talbert played an instrumental role in the WNAACP and NACW organizations and was a powerful black voice during the early movement for equality. Her unique position in history and within American life allowed her to appeal to white audiences, subvert white terror, and succeed where no other black woman intellectual had.
Mary Edmonia Lewis attended Oberlin College from 1859 to 1863. Her time in Oberlin was cut short due accusations that Edmonia Lewis poisoned two of her white classmates. Edmonia Lewis had a successful career as a sculptor, although critics have not always analyzed her work for its intrinsic value.
Mary Jane Patterson became the first African American woman in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree when she completed the collegiate course in Greek, Latin, and mathematics at Oberlin College in 1862. Following her graduation, Patterson became a trailblazer in education, teaching at Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth, the first high school for African Americans in the country, founded in 1837. In 1869, Patterson moved to Washington D.C. where she began serving as director of the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (today known as Dunbar High School) and became the first recorded black principal of a high school in the city. Throughout her academic and professional journey, Mary Jane Patterson encountered respectability politics which served to advance and also hinder her career in the face of the dual burdens of racial and gender-based discrimination.
Rhiannon Giddens is a musical meyander, following her interests and stopping to delve deep into new ideas. Her well-known deep dive is her research of the banjo, an instrument originally brought to America by enslaved African people but commercialized by white minstrel musicians. The history of the banjo is complex, painful, and necessary to uncover and share. Giddens currently sees uncovering the banjo’s history as her life purpose.