Teaching Skills for the Present and Preserving Knowledge of the Past: Education and Legacy

Black Women and Higher Education

With higher education, black women were able to achieve greater prominence and influence. For black Americans, education created a path towards social and economic mobility. Elite black women with access to education were consequently more mobile in their activities compared to poorer black women whose daily struggle for survival prevented them from being able to pursue education. Early examples of black women obtaining college degrees were primarily in the North in more liberal institutions like Oberlin College. Those with liberal arts degrees like Mary Church Terrell expanded black women’s involvement in the areas of public speaking and persuasive writing, making possible the work of later activists like Eartha M. M. White. Clubwomen also frequently had some education that trained them for their public activism. More opportunities for higher education would later appear in the south like the Bethune-Cookman College, led by Florida educator and nationally recognized activist Mary McLeod Bethune as its president. Originally a high school, the college began offering four-year degree programs in the liberal arts and education in 1941. The education women received at Bethune-Cookman trained them for entering public life, equipping them with the tools to communicate for themselves more effectively. A different path coexisted with that of the club activist for young college-educated women seeking employment. The opening of higher education to black women prepared them for the vital job of the schoolteacher.