Читать книгу The Deans' Bible - Angie Klink - Страница 13

CAROLYN ERNESTINE SHOEMAKER possessed a Bible, an American Standard. The cover was supple, cocoa-hued leather. The end of the word “HOLY,” embossed with gold lettering on the spine, curled cheerily upward. The spine read:

HOLY BIBLE

REFERENCES

SELF-PRONOUNCING

NELSON

The term “References” indicated that throughout the text, the Bible contained mentions of other passages of Scripture on the same subject. A “Self-Pronouncing Bible” is one where difficult names are broken into syllables and accented by diacritical marks to help the reader pronounce them correctly. “Nelson” referred to Thomas Nelson Bibles, one of the oldest Bible publishers in the world.

Perhaps the Bible was given to Carolyn as a gift when she was baptized or when she graduated from high school and entered Purdue University. Carolyn graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 1888, less than twenty years after the University opened. Two of her classmates were George Ade, an author and humorist, and John T. McCutcheon, the “Dean of American Cartoonists” and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Carolyn was quiet, composed, and cheerful. People said she had perfect poise. Mrs. Mindwell Crampton Wilson, in “A Tribute to Dean Shoemaker” during Carolyn’s memorial service, said that she “loved truth, seeking it above material things.” She had an open mind; she valued friends, loved her two brothers, Jesse and Charles, lived simply, and found joy in work. One of the few photos of Carolyn shows her looking wistfully through her wire glasses, her dark hair in a finger wave, a popular style of the time, with a long strand of pearls accenting her dark, scooped-neck dress with lace sleeves.

Carolyn was a student in the first class Stanley Coulter taught after he arrived at Purdue to teach zoology. Later, he would become Purdue’s first dean of men. Coulter spoke fondly of Carolyn, the student he would grow to know more deeply as a colleague in the following decades. During Carolyn’s memorial service, in a speech titled “Dean Shoemaker, The Woman,” Coulter said: “I recognized in her case I was to deal with an exceptional personality. She had at all times a faraway look in her eyes, which only the years interpreted to me.”

Emma Montgomery McRae was a professor of English literature at Purdue who nurtured Carolyn’s love of language. The two women had studied together and shared a trip to Europe. Carolyn said that Emma was the greatest influence of her adult life.

Emma was a solid, broad-faced woman with hair loosely piled atop her head. She had been a high school teacher and principal in Muncie, Indiana, and she was the first woman in the state to be chosen as president of the State Teachers Association.

A group of women created the Muncie McRae Club in Emma’s honor in 1894 for “intellectual and cultural pursuit” of “education in art, science, literature, and music.” This was during a time when many women did not have the opportunity for education, and the club was an answer to that academic void. The club also discussed social concerns such as suffrage, child labor, and race relations. A program booklet contained the motto, “Study to be what you wish to seem” with a tribute to Emma, “our honorary member—eminent as teacher and lecturer, a woman of rare character and great influence.”

The McRae Club history goes on to describe Emma as a woman who “… filled her niche in life to the fullest, and with it all, remained so gentle, so plain, so unassuming and yet so dignified. Wherever she walked, people were wont to say, ‘A queen has passed this way.’ [Her] lectures were always masterpieces, her travelogues were unsurpassed [and] couched in the King’s best English.”

When Purdue President James H. Smart hired her in 1887, Emma became the “unofficial” dean of women. She was known as “Mother McRae,” and because there were few female faculty members and a small number of female students, she served as a counselor on every academic and personal problem these students experienced. Emma epitomized high character, delivered masterful speeches, and garnered immense respect. With Emma, the die was cast.

Ladies Hall was the epicenter of every academic and social activity for Purdue’s female students and where all of the home economics classes were held. In the early years, home economics was the “foot in the door” to higher education for women. Often, females were “not allowed” to take other courses seen as “unwomanly.” It was the rare woman who bucked the stereotypes and took engineering or agriculture.

The building also was a residence hall where the women and Emma lived. Ladies Hall was a striking redbrick building with imposing twin towers. An iron fire escape wove a path from a third-floor arched window onto a veranda rooftop, then down a ladder that scaled the side of the building to the lawn. The fire escape was a popular place for photographs, with women students posing in a line on each stair step or clinging to the ladder, smiling, in their hats, gloves, black fur-collared coats, and high-button shoes. Each window bore a roller shade with a dangling string to pull for privacy. When it was constructed in 1872, Ladies Hall was the first permanent building north of State Street, the dirt thoroughfare that divided the Purdue campus.

Put in context, it is remarkable that any woman obtained a college degree during the late 1800s, for society severely challenged women’s efforts for an education. When Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, grievances were documented in the “Declaration of Sentiments” and set the agenda for the women’s rights movement. One of the sentiments stated, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward women.… He had denied her the facilities of a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.” An outcome of the convention was a demand for higher education for women.

Through the 1890s, “scientific” reports were released that showed that too much education could seriously hurt the female reproductive system. Commonly known as the Progressive Era, 1890 to 1917 was a watershed in women’s intellectual history. There was a genuine fear that a good education would make a woman unfit for marriage and motherhood. In fact, nearly half of the first generation of college women did not marry or delayed marriage. They turned their energies to social reform and careers. Society offered educated women two choices—marriage or work, and many chose work. Remarkably, this cultural commandment to choose between career and marriage persisted well into the first half of the twentieth century.

When Carolyn Shoemaker was twenty-one, she obtained her master’s degree from Purdue with plans to embark on a teaching career; however, as happens to many women, she put her personal goals on hold to care for someone she loved. Carolyn tended to her invalid mother for eleven years. Emma McRae hired Carolyn, age thirty-five, as an English literature instructor in 1900, the same year Carolyn’s mother passed away.

Carolyn was an inspiring professor who infused a love of literature and drama into her teaching. She was a dynamic orator, on and off campus, and gave book reviews and speeches to clubs and organizations throughout Indiana.

Carolyn’s office was in University Hall, today the oldest building on Purdue’s campus. In his speech during Carolyn’s memorial service, titled “Miss Shoemaker, The Teacher,” Professor H. L. Creek, head of the Department of English, described Carolyn in this manner:

She would enter the English Department office to get her mail, smile a greeting to anyone who might be present, and go back to her own office, perhaps without speaking. Ordinarily she seemed quite composed, with something of philosophic calm in her face and manner. Then sometimes there would come a sudden revelation of emotion—deep determination to accomplish something she thought important, a touch of indignation at some wrong, a bit of sorrow at the failure of others to reach her ideals, a flash of sympathy for someone who did not seem to be having a fair chance in life. At such moments we felt that Miss Shoemaker, calm as she might seem, had a deeply emotional life, and that her power as a teacher and as a woman lay in the warmth of her feelings.

Carolyn enjoyed studying human character. The teaching of drama appealed to her the most because she was interested in the interplay of purpose and personality. She relished mortal complexities found in fiction, biography, and autobiography.

As a member of Central Presbyterian Church, Carolyn taught “Bible Class in the Sabbath School” to a large group of Purdue coeds. The Bible was filled with the literary concepts Carolyn loved—drama, mortal complexities, purpose, and personality.

THE “UNOFFICIAL” DEAN OF WOMEN Emma McRae retired from Purdue in 1912. She was the first female faculty member to receive a Carnegie Foundation retirement grant. Andrew Carnegie had just established the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding” among the people of the United States. While Carnegie is best known for his establishment of free public libraries throughout America, he also supported education and teachers. He was shocked to discover that teachers, “one of the highest professions,” had less financial security than his former office clerks. His teacher retirement accounts are now called TIAA-CREF.

The year after Emma retired, Purdue President Winthrop Stone called Carolyn, age forty-eight, into his office and offered her the newly created appointment of part-time dean of women. Many universities were establishing similar positions, and as Stone said, almost begrudgingly, he guessed Purdue should, too. Female students had lost their confidante and counselor when Emma retired. Shoemaker was surprised and in awe of the responsibility; she said she was not sure she could handle such a job. The story repeated in countless chronicles of Purdue history for the last century is that Stone bellowed, “Be a man, Miss Shoemaker! Be a man! Do not let this or any other task worry you.” Carolyn accepted the position of part-time dean of women in 1913, but she served Purdue very much like a woman.

Student Marion L. Smith (in her memorial speech for Carolyn, titled “The Dean of Women”) described her:

High aims and high ideals alone were not enough for Miss Shoemaker. One of the significant characteristics to which practically every coed made reference was her willingness to help—no problem brought to her by a coed was too small for her to consider; another characteristic was her desire to be reached easily by the coeds—she tried to be in her office whenever possible, and she was never too busy to see one; another trait was her sympathetic and understanding nature. She realized how important those problems were and what they meant to the girls who brought them, and she sincerely tried to solve those problems. Girls have actually gone into her office weeping and come out smiling.

Female faculty members in colleges across the United States were asked to serve a dual role as deans of women from the 1890s to the 1930s. The deans were to oversee the women who were the minority population on campus. They would insulate the women from the “maleness” of the campuses and, in turn, protect and guide the women. The deans were scholars who were concerned about the intellectual development of women, especially in competition with men.

The presence of women on campuses made university presidents and male faculty members uneasy. Women in colleges raised concerns about propriety, delicate matters of health, and female “problems,” as well as the institutional responsibility to families to protect the safety, sexual virtue, and reputations of daughters far from home. For the uncomfortable males, appointing a dean of women to handle all those “unpleasant” female needs was the perfect solution.

Yet Carolyn helped the less than one hundred females on Purdue’s campus with much more than matters of propriety. When women did not have enough money to finish their degrees, Carolyn gave them financial assistance from her own pocketbook. She also abetted social troubles, “scholastic adjustments,” rooming house supervision, and general overseeing of all coed organizations and activities. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was one of the oldest campus institutions. The YWCA sponsored the Big Sister Movement, by which the women in the upper classes familiarized the freshmen females with activities and customs. In later years, this program at Purdue would be named the “Green Guard.”

Carolyn became Purdue’s first part-time dean of women the same year Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union (later named the National Woman’s Party) to work toward the passage of a federal amendment to give women the right to vote. Paul, age twenty-eight, “cut her teeth” as a suffragist in England. While there, she met Burns in London.

On March 3, 1913, one day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Paul and Burns organized a strategically timed, majestically staged women’s suffrage parade with more than 5,000 marchers striding down Pennsylvania Avenue. Stunning and confident, Inez Milholland, a lawyer, led the parade. Draped in a cream cape that billowed in the breeze, she rode astride a snow-white horse. Holding a place of honor, immediately following, were women from seventeen countries that had already enfranchised women. Then came the “Pioneers,” women who had been struggling in the American suffrage movement for sixty-five years to secure the right to vote.

The next section of the parade celebrated workingwomen, grouped by occupation and wearing the appropriate garb. There were nine bands, twenty-four floats, and a section for male supporters. The marchers waved American flags and bore signs and sashes in suffrage colors of purple, white, and gold that bore the words “Votes for Women.” About 500,000 spectators gathered along the route.

Everyone was welcome to participate, with one exception. In a city that was southern in both location and attitude, where the Christmas Eve rape of a government clerk by a black man had percolated racist sentiments, Paul was convinced that some white women would not march with black women. In response to several inquiries, she had quietly discouraged blacks from participating.

Aware they were not wanted and in spite of fear that they may be attacked, a new Howard University African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, joined the procession. African American activists believed that if white women needed the vote to secure their rights, black women needed it even more. They faced discrimination on two levels—sex and race. The parade was the group’s first public act. Today, Delta Sigma Theta is one of the largest African American women’s organizations in the country, with an estimated 300,000 members around the world and a chapter at Purdue University.

Meanwhile, panicky reports came from white suffragists in Chicago that Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist and suffragist who led an antilynching campaign, planned to join the procession. When the Illinois unit assembled in the parade line, leaders of the group instructed Wells-Barnett to walk with an all-black group rather than under the flag of her home state. With tears in her eyes, Wells-Barnett refused to participate in the procession unless “I can march under the Illinois banner.”

Wells-Barnett stood from the sidelines watching the cavalcade until she decided to solve the issue herself by defiantly walking, mid-parade, from the sidelines into the Illinois group, matching their stride and ignoring their stares. Wells-Barnett once said, “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

Few would notice Wells-Barnett’s bold move for the parade was about to turn to mayhem. Some of the onlookers, mostly men in town for the presidential inauguration, jeered, “Go back home where you belong.” Men surged into the street, making it difficult for the parade to pass. They snatched banners, grabbed at clothing, and tried to climb onto floats. Women were tripped, grabbed, shoved, spat upon, and many heard “indecent epithets” and “barnyard conversation.” The men marching in the parade were met with degrading remarks, such as, “Where are your skirts?”

Rather than protecting the marchers, some of the police were amused by the sneers and laughter and joined in. A mass of humanity filled the streets, wearing bowlers and wide-brimmed hats, bundled in coats and gloves. While many policemen turned a blind eye to the marchers’ degrading and frightening circumstances, the unexpected heroes of the march were 1,500 Boy Scouts of America.

The Boy Scouts had been invited to the parade in full uniform—knickers, boots, hats, and staves—as volunteers to help with law enforcement. Their organization had been founded just three years earlier. Little did the Boy Scouts know when they agreed to assist the police, they would have to actually defend marchers from police inaction. The boys attempted to hold back the crowds and assisted the two ambulances that traveled to and from the hospital for six hours shuttling the one hundred injured. Eventually, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson authorized the use of a troop of cavalry from nearby Fort Myer to help control the crowd.

Boys’ Life magazine featured a four-page article about the Scouts’ deeds in its April 1913 issue. The magazine reported that while the police initially told the Boy Scouts to stay behind their lines, the crowd soon overwhelmed law enforcement. Police were begging scouts for help and borrowing their staves. As a young organization, the Boy Scouts of America relished the good press. The Boys’ Life article concluded, “Washington and its respectable visitors will not soon forget the spectacle of boys in the uniform that stands for learning the principles of good citizenship actually restraining grown men from acting the part of brutes.”

Even with the numerous difficulties, many marchers completed the parade route, which ended at the Treasury Building.

The mistreatment of the marchers by both the crowd and the police led to Senate subcommittee hearings with more than 150 witnesses recounting their experiences. The superintendent of police for the District of Columbia lost his job. The committee heard multiple mentions of the heroic Boy Scouts.

Despite the anger and violence, the suffragists considered the march a success, for it was the first national expression of demand for an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women. The public outcry and press coverage after the event helped the suffragists’ cause.

The parade reinvigorated the suffrage movement and aided in propelling the country toward the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification on August 18, 1920. With a parade, a vision, and courage, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns reignited a national ardor for the women’s vote.

This was America for women when Carolyn Shoemaker became the first dean of women at Purdue University.