The Women of Kendall Green: Coeducation at Gallaudet, 1860-1910

Presentation Video

Introduction

Lindsey M. Patterson presents one of the most carefully argued and one of the most critical essays yet published about Gallaudet’s institutional history and, along with Michael J. Olson’s, one of the most critical of Edward Miner Gallaudet’s leadership. Even more importantly, it suggests interpretations that challenge common assumptions about the history of the American deaf community. Parker traces the history of women students at Gallaudet College—their initial acceptance, then rejection, eventual readmittance, and subsequent struggle to gain equality with male students—and observes that gender seemed to mark educational expectations and social boundaries more strongly than deafness. Her conclusion suggests that deafness, or the shared use of sign language, has not been the strongly unifying force in American deaf history that many scholars have depicted.

COEDUCATION IN AMERICA was a source of controversy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, delineating distinct boundaries between those who viewed women’s familial roles as incompatible with classroom education, particularly higher education, and those who saw gender equality in education as an inalienable right. While this issue has been extensively vetted in the context of mainstream studies of American history, coeducation specifically and, more generally, gender inequality has been relatively neglected lenses through which to view the field of Deaf history.

Deaf women pioneers produced the momentum that would ultimately tear down the barriers to women’s acceptance at Gallaudet College. Their concerns were rejected initially, but the college later capitulated under pressure from a broader women’s rights movement. The early stages of acceptance reveal great similarities among women in higher education, both Deaf and hearing, arguably more so than between male and female cohorts at Gallaudet. These women banded together to establish a presence that would ultimately extend beyond the walls of higher education and into their own communities.

The nineteenth century marked a new emphasis on education. The societal transition from a barter-based economy to one relying upon the exchange of cash increased the demand for literacy and mathematic skills and created a greater need for higher education institutions.¹ However, a majority of the institutions created to meet this demand were for elite, white, male, upper-class citizens. The women’s rights movement seized this issue, and coeducation proved to be a driving force in nineteenth-century demands. Coeducation was a highly controversial topic from its commencement in the mid-1800s to well into the late twentieth century. Opponents cited countless reasons for banning women from higher education in the company of men, including the assertion that women’s brains were five ounces smaller than their male counterparts and the widely referenced myth that advanced scholarship would “damage a woman’s ability to bear children.” Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. Edward Clarke, was an influential advocate of this latter theory. He argued in his 1873 book, Sex in Education that, “women needed to save their limited energy for childbearing. If they used it all up studying, they would damage their female apparatus.”²

Female activists capitalized on the idea of private spheres and mother-hood to advocate for the higher education of women. In rebuttal to those opposing coeducation—who argued that women belonged in the private sphere of their home, rearing children—women’s rights activists responded with what women’s historians today refer to as “republican motherhood,” or an argument based on the stance that women’s domestic roles would improve with higher learning.³ As the concept of republican motherhood spread and gained acceptance in mainstream society, coeducation started to take root. Oberlin College in Ohio holds the distinction of being the first coeducational institution, admitting women in 1833. By 1880, three in five women in higher education attended coeducational colleges.⁴

Women were not the only minority group yearning for higher educational opportunities in the mid-nineteenth century. The Deaf community echoed the same need for a college education. John Carlin, a graduate of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf who was also a teacher and an artist, argued in favor of a college for deaf students in an 1854 article featured in the American Annals of the Deaf.

Universities, Colleges, Free Academies and High Schools have been built. For whom? For speaking persons of fine minds. For what? For their intellectual culture to the utmost degree. Why should not one college be reared in fair proportions to elevate the condition of our most promising deaf mutes and semi mutes, seeing that they have a just claim to the superior education enjoyed by the former?⁵

The events leading to the establishment of the first such college began in 1857, when Amos Kendall, philanthropist and former postmaster general, decided to establish a school for deaf and blind students, inspired by five deaf orphans for whom he was legal guardian.⁶ Kendall appointed twenty-year-old Edward Miner Gallaudet as the superintendent of the primary school, known today as Kendall Demonstration Elementary School, because of Gallaudet’s famous lineage in the field of deaf education. Gallaudet’s father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, established the first residential school for the deaf in the United States, the American School for the Deaf (ASD), while his Deaf mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet (one of the first pupils of ASD and a Deaf cultural icon), accompanied him as matron on his new endeavor. However, unlike his father, Gallaudet’s vision was not limited to the establishment of a residential institution; he hoped to build a college.

Kendall’s endowment of land and Congressional funding provided the new superintendent with the means to establish a college for deaf students. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation authorizing the granting of collegiate degrees by the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind, renamed Gallaudet College in 1894 in honor of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.⁷ Carlin, being an early advocate for higher education in the Deaf community, was one of the main speakers at the inauguration of the college and received the first honorary degree.⁸ It did not appear at the outset that the Deaf community would face the same controversies over the issue of coeducation at Gallaudet College as at mainstream schools. Upon the college’s founding in 1864, no official statement was made in favor of or in denial of women’s admittance. Two Deaf women, Emma Sparks and Annie Szymanoskie, were among the seven students in the inaugural preparatory class.⁹ However, President Gallaudet closed the doors to women in 1871, and they remained shut for sixteen years.

Little is known about these first two Gallaudet women beyond what is stated in their admittance records: Emma Sparks was from Maryland and became deaf when ten years old, while Annie Szymanoskie was orphaned at a young age after becoming deaf from scarlet fever at the age of two. Szymanoskie was one of the five orphans Kendall adopted and a pupil of the first class to attend the Kendall School. President Gallaudet described her as “an extremely intelligent girl with a pleasant personality and an occasional stubborn streak.” Despite this compliment, neither woman continued past her introductory year, possibly for financial reasons.¹⁰ However, historians John Van Cleve and Barry Crouch believe that “Gallaudet realized that many would not have the means to pay this sum [college fees], and from the beginning the college attempted to find a way to support all deaf pupils who had the desire and the ability, but not the money, to pursue college study.”¹¹

Although Sparks and Szymanoskie did not continue their college education, the following year two more women took their places. Adelaide Smith, deaf at eighteen months from scarlet fever, followed in her predecessors’ footsteps and did not remain at the college past her preparatory year. Lydia Kennedy, a classmate of Smith’s at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, surpassed her cohort and entered as a first-year student in the fall of 1866.¹² However, consistent with all of the female students before her, she left the college the following year. The 1867 annual report mentions that Kennedy left the college in pursuit of a teaching position at the Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton.¹³

Lydia Mitchell, a Kendall School alumna, was the last of the women of the era to enter Gallaudet College. She began her studies in 1868 and had the longest tenure at the institution, continuing into the fall of 1871. In a letter addressed to President Gallaudet in September 1871, before the start of the fall term, she inquired about the availability of housing for her on campus, “I do not suppose you have as yet taken pains to seek a place for me?” She explained her desire to continue her education at the institution, “But what I wish to ask you is how soon you think I may be admitted—I should like very much to get an occupation this fall as soon possible, for I feel that I am spending my time in idleness at home.” Wanting to continue her education, but unsure if she had a place to live at the college, she concluded her letter to the president with, “I will leave it all to you, trusting you can judge better what will be best for me.”¹⁴ Mitchell did not return to Gallaudet College that fall. The only documentation of her discontinuance at the institution can be found in the faculty minutes, stating that “she leaves college with [a] certificate [in] June 1871.”¹⁵

Ambiguous school records and the absence of known diaries of the female students leave one to speculate why the female students initially had such a short tenure at the college. Many were noted as bright and intelligent, and there is every reason to believe that the women’s initial acceptance to Gallaudet College was well deserved. President Gallaudet ensured strict admission standards, Applicants for admission had to be recommended by the principals of the schools from which they graduated. Gallaudet personally reviewed and decided upon on all the applications during the nineteenth century. After acceptance, each student was given a battery of examinations.¹⁶

Still, the majority of the women did not continue past their first year, and none advanced past her sophomore year. In contrast with the female students, twelve of the seventeen male preparatory students in the 1868 incoming class advanced to the freshman class. The male attrition rate declined the following year, as eleven students went on to attend their sophomore year.¹⁷

If the female students were prepared academically, their failure to succeed at the Deaf college must have some other explanation. Mitchell’s correspondence with Gallaudet about the insufficient accommodations may provide a possible answer, as it alludes to an unwelcome environment condoned by the faculty and male students. The few female students were housed with the elementary school children in Old Fowler Hall, the original Kendall School building, while their male cohorts had their own residence within Rose Cottage. Rose Cottage was the original building on the Kendall estate and former primary school house. Often referred to as the “cradle of Gallaudet,” this historic building was replaced by the Kendall School building, which is now part of the east wing of College Hall.¹⁸

No female students were admitted to the institution for the next seventeen years after Mitchell’s withdrawal in 1871, even though a considerable number applied. President Gallaudet used the excuse of lack of accommodations to keep his college an exclusively male domain.¹⁹ Over the next sixteen years, the issue of coeducation continued to be highly contested within both the Deaf community and within mainstream society.

The Road to Acceptance

The matter of coeducation at the college for deaf students lay dormant in the Deaf community for only a couple of years after Lydia Mitchell’s departure. Surprisingly, the all-male literary society reignited the fire, debating the issue at one of its meetings in 1873. The proceedings from the debate were featured in the Silent World, a periodical dedicated to Deaf community issues, in an article titled, “Should Ladies Be Admitted into Our College?” The literary society argued favorably for the admission of women. One student claimed that,

The presence of ladies in our college would certainly be beneficial to us in many respects, and especially in refining our manners. Were we to associate with ladies in our college daily, and occasionally have social gatherings, our manners would be very much improved, and we would go into society without embarrassment after graduating college.²⁰

The men’s argument embodied gendered stereotypes, but it may have looked to persuade more conservative readers to accept coeducation, leaving room for speculation that an all-male deaf college campus may have ulterior motives in its desire for female attendance outside of “refining manners.” Regardless of the arguments and true intentions, the writer’s recognition of the obstacles facing Deaf women took a more sincere tone, “Many ladies desire to pursue a collegiate course of study, but men have placed a barrier to their progress, and are now unwilling to remove it.”²¹ Although the male students of the college recognized the benefits of coeducation, their administrators did not; the male students’ views failed to have any effect on the admission policies at the time.

Two years after the literary society debate, Laura Sheridan of Indiana wrote a poignant article, “The Higher-Education of Deaf-Mute Women,” in the October 1875 issue of the American Annals of the Deaf. The Annals was the first publication dedicated to deaf education and was (and remains) the official journal for the Council of American Instructors of the Deaf (CAID) and the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf (CEASD).²² Sheridan, known as a “pioneer in the Deaf world,” was also the first woman to present a paper to the CAID in 1882 and was a leader in the Chicago Methodist community, serving as an interpreter to Deaf minister Philip Hasenstab.²³ In her article, Sheridan recognized the lack of reaction from the Deaf community to the literary society’s article in the Silent World, and asked, “What have we heard of the question [of coeducation] in the Silent World? Nothing. Are deaf-mute women different in nature, mind, function, and influence from their hearing sisters? No.”²⁴

Sheridan was no different than her “hearing sisters” in her argument for coeducation. She capitalized on the “republican motherhood” theory that many mainstream female activists used in the latter half of the nineteenth century. “A high state of culture is as necessary for woman as for man—for the beings who must be the mothers of our greatest men and mould [sic] the impressible years of childhood for those who cast the ballot,” she wrote.²⁵ Sheridan’s article also questioned whether the college was satisfying its mission.

Has the National Deaf-Mute College, whose proposed object is ‘to give competent deaf-mutes and others, who by reason of deafness cannot be educated elsewhere, a thorough education in the studies usually pursued in American Colleges,’ opened its doors to women?

The emotionally charged article concluded with her own concession of “longings and ambitions” for a higher education, an unattainable goal that would “haunt her memory with a sadness inexpressible.”²⁶

Female students continued to submit applications for admittance into Gallaudet College despite the lack of public response from the college administration and the Deaf community to both the literary society’s article and Sheridan’s piece. Other scholars have written that President Gallaudet created a circular argument in the consideration of female applicants. While using the excuse that there were not enough applicants to justify the construction of accommodations for the students, denying them entrance into the college ensured that a low number of females would apply. “Women would hardly apply in large numbers to a school that only admitted men,” one observer noted.²⁷ However, from 1871 when the last enrolled female exited the institution, to 1886, the time when the college officially acknowledged its coeducational status, at least seven female students inquired about the possibility of attending the college.²⁸

In the fall of 1880, after the college rejected seven female applicants due to alleged inadequate accommodations, Gallaudet announced that Congress had appropriated over eight thousand dollars to construct a state of the art gymnasium on campus. The construction of “Ole Jim,” as the gymnasium is called today, focused Deaf community debate on coeducation. Articles surrounding this issue flooded Deaf newspapers, such as the Deaf Mutes’ Journal, from August 1880 to April 1881. The coeducational supporters, both men and women, questioned why Congressional funds would be used for the “physical development” of male students, when the money could have provided a physical space to enable a college education for female students.²⁹ Female leaders in the community, such as Angeline Fuller, a Deaf poetess and female activist from the Illinois School for the Deaf, were outspoken in their opposition to the construction of the gymnasium. Fuller blamed the male students for what she considered the misappropriation of funding, and she criticized their self-indulgence for wanting a gymnasium over supporting their cohorts’ educational efforts. In an editorial featured in the Deaf Mutes’ Journal, she warned deaf women not to marry the gluttonous college men.³⁰

Fuller was one of the first and foremost supporters of the idea of establishing a Deaf women’s college separate from Gallaudet. She pledged five dollars (which equates to roughly eighty dollars in today’s terms) of her own money toward this endeavor and began collecting pledges from other supporters, such as the esteemed deaf writer, Laura Redding Searing. This idea was short lived; without Congressional funding, the sixty dollars raised in donations was not enough to establish a separate college for female students.³¹

As the bantering over the gymnasium continued, there was no official response from President Gallaudet or his administration in the pages of the Deaf Mutes’ Journal. When the construction of the gymnasium concluded in 1881, complete with state-of-the-art amenities such as an in-door pool and bowling alley, so did the public debates within the Deaf community about higher education for women.³² Women continued to show interest, however, by submitting letters to President Gallaudet requesting admittance into the college.

The issue reentered the public forum at the July 1886 meeting of the CAID. Georgia Elliott, a pupil of the Illinois School for the Deaf, read a letter promoting female attendance at the college. Elliott echoed many of Sheridan’s points from eleven years before, using sentiments of republican motherhood in her argument. “Girls need a higher education as much as boys,” Elliott wrote. “Their influence upon society as women, as mothers, as sisters, is very great, and a thorough education will better fit them for all their duties.”³³ While Elliott’s letter did not reverberate throughout the Deaf community newspapers, it did bring to light a topic that President Gallaudet had actively discouraged for the past twelve years.

Ole Jim

The late nineteenth century marked a burgeoning time for female solidarity, and it was an era of female political reform, resulting in the formation of clubs, organizations, and social movements.³⁴ College-educated women of the era formed the Western Association of Collegiate Alumnae (WACA). One of the main goals of the organization was the promotion of higher education for women. Amelia Platter, spokeswoman for the committee on higher education, contacted President Gallaudet in August of 1886 in this regard. She opened her letter with,

I was appointed a committee of one to ask you, on behalf of that organization, and also in behalf of the unfortunate deaf-mute ladies of our country, to take such steps, and to use your influence to the end that the institution over which you preside and have control, be opened to the admission of lady as well as gentlemen students.³⁵

While acknowledging a difference between deaf and hearing people, “the unfortunate deaf-mute ladies,” the organization’s members did not discriminate against their fellow “sisters” in regard to hearing status.

The social uplift of women through higher education took precedence over disability, as gender transcended the boundaries of hearing status. Platter did her research on the history and founding of Gallaudet College and carefully organized her argument accordingly.

The National Deaf-Mute College is a public institution. It has been built and supported almost entirely by the government. Since the college was inaugurated in 1864, Congress has appropriated to it $304,660.64 and seventeen acres of ground, besides building four dwelling houses for the college officers and providing improvements and extensions. It is certainly simple justice that our institution supported by the people’s money should admit all who need and desire its instruction.³⁶

The crux of her argument hinged on the public funding of the institution, driving home the point that Gallaudet College should follow the wants of American citizens, including deaf women.

Platter’s letter on behalf of the WACA may have been the driving force behind President Gallaudet’s change of heart in 1886. It was influential enough to be referred to in his 1886 annual report, “[The WACA] urges with much force that deaf women ought to be permitted to share in the advantages afforded by the bounty of Congress for the higher education of deaf young men of the country.”³⁷ Later Gallaudet shared his opposition to coeducation in his history of the college.

The admission of young women to the college was agreed to by me with a good deal of reluctance and considerable apprehension that the college education of the sexes together might lead to unsatisfactory results. I had never been warmly in favor of co-education.³⁸

It was probably disconcerting to him that a well-known organization, external to the Deaf community, had questioned the institution’s Congressional funding and insisted upon the right of women to attend the college. Less than five months after Platter’s letter, the politically astute president of Gallaudet College began to probe superintendents of residential schools about the possibility of opening the college to women. His letter of inquiry requested the opinion of the superintendents and the recommendation of qualified female students, if any were available.³⁹

The range of responses to Gallaudet’s letter varied greatly. The superintendent of the Wisconsin School, John W. Swiler, “heartily approved of the coeducational movement,” and felt that “the spirit of the age and intelligence of the period would justify such a movement.”⁴⁰ Job Williams, superintendent of the American School for the Deaf, did not view coeducation in the same light.

I would say that there is no young lady connected with our school, who would be at all likely to apply for admission to the college next academic year. I have an idea that if the doors of the College are opened for the admission of young ladies, there will be much less desire to enter than there has been while the doors were closed.⁴¹

While Williams’ hypothesis proved to be false—when the doors opened, women did apply—some superintendents in 1886 stated that they did not have any female students to recommend for the upcoming academic year.

The Deaf Mutes’ Journal was one of the first newspapers to publish the announcement that women would be permitted to attend Gallaudet College, declaring that “the Board of Directors of the Institution, having considered at two previous meetings, decided unanimously on Saturday of last, to try the experiment of admitting young women to the college.” The article attempted to close the chapter on the highly contested debate of coeducation within the Deaf community, stating, “No comment is necessary. The young ladies are to be congratulated in having secured so quietly and easily a privilege which other colleges have been slow to bestow.”⁴² However, the author’s perspective on the effortless admittance process is a bit skewed, as the Deaf community had debated coeducation for fifteen years.

Due to the lack of adequate accommodations for women on campus, Gallaudet decided that the incoming female students would reside in House One, the President’s residence. The Gallaudet family relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, and President Gallaudet was granted absence “ad libitum” for the two-year trial period that he had determined would be necessary to evaluate coeducation.⁴³ The six female students lived on the third floor of the president’s house with their matron Ellen Gordon.

The two-year experimentation period began in the fall of 1887. As a class of 1893 alumna described it, “when the time was ripe they took their places by the sides of their brothers and prepared to enter a life of better endeavor and higher thought.”⁴⁴ Six women moved into House One to embark upon the world of higher education. The inaugural class of ladies included Alto Lowman of the Maryland School for the Deaf; Georgia Elliott, valedictorian of her class at the Illinois School of the Deaf; Ella Florence Black from the Indiana School for the Deaf; Anna Luella Kurtz, also from the Indiana School from the Deaf; Hattie A. Leffler of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf; and Margaret Ellen Rudd of the Nebraska School for the Deaf.⁴⁵ All had been highly recommended by their former superintendents, and all had exhibited their intellects by passing the entrance exams on a par with their male peers.

Although these women gained acceptance into Gallaudet College, their presence at the institution was far from welcome. The experiences that the sextet endured may explain why only one member of their class, Alto Lowman, graduated.

The Female Experience

While the female students had earned admittance to Gallaudet College in the fall of 1887, they had yet to earn the respect of their peers and the faculty. In September 1887, the faculty members devoted the first three meetings of the academic year to the “regulations” for the female students.⁴⁶ However, no specific regulations for the women were documented during these meetings. Although the women were admitted under the same “terms and conditions as have been applied to young men,” as President Gallaudet reported to the superintendents of the residential schools the previous spring, the women did not receive this same equality in regard to campus life.⁴⁷

Still, in 1889 the college administration decided to make coeducation permanent at the college. The administration did not make a formal announcement about this decision. The annual report simply no longer referred to coeducation as an experiment.⁴⁸ The Deaf Mutes’ Journal’s “Washington correspondent” noted, however, that “from the fact that the two years of experiment have expired and the college is still open to the admission of young women, we infer that the trial has been satisfactory to the board and co-education is an established fact in the National College.”⁴⁹

The faculty members did not make any concessions to make the women students feel more at “home.” In fact, they were actually more rigid in the regulations placed on female students. Five years after the experimentation period was announced over, female students were still being treated as outsiders. Consistent with Victorian era values, the women were not allowed to leave campus without a chaperon. According to Agatha Tiegel Hanson, a member of the class of 1893, “To go in groups for hikes, to visit public buildings, to go skating or to the theatre, a chaperon was always required. If the girls were unsuccessful in finding someone who had the leisure and the will to go with them, they had to forego the contemplated diversion.”⁵⁰ While it is understandable given Alto Lowman the time period that young females were not to leave campus unchaperoned, “babysitters” for on-campus activities seem more onerous, but faculty minutes clearly documented that female students were not allowed to attend on campus extracurricular activities without a matron or faculty member escort.

While some of the male students began to adjust to the female presence on campus, and even welcomed it, the faculty and administrators sought to keep a division between the sexes, especially in regards to extracurricular activities, such as the literary society. Commonly referred to as “The Lit,” the organization was established in the early 1870s “for the improvement of signs, oratory, and readiness in debate.”⁵¹ When chaperoned, female students were permitted to attend the literary meetings in the lyceum located on the third floor of College Hall; however, their involvement was restricted to the degree where they “sat meekly back and watched brother-students hold forth in lectures, debates, dialogues and declamations on the platform.”⁵² In 1889 an officer of the literary society requested that female students “might be allowed to join the same [as male students].” However, the faculty minutes reveal that female involvement in the organization was “voted to not be so allowed.” Almost exactly a year to the day later, a female student formally requested permission to join the organization via a letter to the professors and administrators. Again, the faculty “voted that the request be not granted, but that [the females] be advised to associate among themselves for literary improvement.”⁵³ While the faculty and administration gave no reasons for their decision, it is apparent that they sought to segregate the student body and were thus responsible for deepening the gender divide by passing on myriad opportunities to create parity between the sexes, relegating the female students to second-class status.

Male faculty fostered the gender chasm. Agatha Tiegel Hanson re-called that in her experience, “we were conscious of being under constant and critical observation, as though the faculty and male students were holding a silent court on us and our ability to make good.”⁵⁴ May Martin, an 1895 graduate, had similar recollections. At an alumni gathering at the turn of the century she recognized one unnamed professor in particular “who was loudest in opposition” to the female students’ attendance.⁵⁵ Hanson openly expressed her contempt for the situation forced on the females: “I resented this being on trial, both at Gallaudet and at the world at large.”⁵⁶ Not only were the women’s actions monitored, but their academic records were also under close observation. However, contemporaneously with the expiration of the experimentation period and numerous high ranking scores on their examinations, the women began to gain some respect at least in the realm of academics and test scores.⁵⁷

The male students at Gallaudet College in the 1880s also contributed to the difficult situation the females faced. The inaugural year of coeducation at the college included not only criticism but also physical hazing of the female students. A Buff and Blue (the college newspaper) article recalls a time when the women were regarded as “freaks” on campus— “when the girls went to and from recitations in the college halls, all the [male] students would line up in rows and thus compel them to run a daily gauntlet of masculine curiosity.”⁵⁸ The females reported experiencing “fear and trembling when faced with that mockery crowd of boys in halls.” One woman who survived her first years at the college passed on these words of advice to an incoming 1890 freshman, “Don’t take any aprons to college! The boys make fun of a girl who wore aprons to recitations, no matter how pretty and dainty said aprons might be.”⁵⁹

Harassing the women not only divided relationships between male and female students but also caused hardship for the men who stood up for their cohorts. There was one group of male students who were persistently “frank and outspoken” in their opposition to the female students, while a smaller coalition of men denounced the others’ actions, calling them “persecution of a number of weak and defenseless [sic] creatures who were in College ‘on trial.’” The opposition between the two groups of males grew, forcing individuals to choose sides, and resulting in the annulment of many friendships and prohibiting potential ones.⁶⁰

Even though the sextet did garner some support from their male peers during their first year at the college, only three women advanced from the preparatory class to the freshman class the following year: Georgia Elliott, Alto Lowman, and Margaret Ellen Rudd.⁶¹ However, the female students would gain more support with the influx of five more women in the preparatory class. The women of Gallaudet College did not retaliate against the hazing and “harsh treatment by their fellow students.”⁶² Instead, they continued to prove their worth academically and waited for the experimentation period to expire before establishing a place for themselves at the college.

Making a Place of Their Own

The experience of exclusion at the academic and social levels in higher education during the late nineteenth century was not unique to Kendall Green. Marginalization from campus organizations and athletics was a common experience for female students attending previously all-male institutions.⁶³ In 1877, a graduate of the University of Michigan, Olive San Louie Anderson, described her coeducation experience as follows: “A freshman year in college is full of trials for a boy; but, for a girl, who enters an institution where boys have held undisputed sway for generations, everyday brings persecutions which he never feels.”⁶⁴

Gallaudet College was unique among other educational institutions in that all of its students had one thing in common—their deafness. This one unifying factor may have even transcended gender or race. Christopher Krentz has written that “for many deaf people, the deaf community functioned as a second family, a group where one was understood and accepted, where one felt happy, normal, and at home.”⁶⁵ John Vickrey Van Cleve and Barry A. Crouch effectively argue in A Place of Their Own that the nineteenth-century Deaf community formed a subculture, focused on organizations and residential schools, within American society. Van Cleve and Crouch apply this same argument to Gallaudet College, describing the college as a “place” for the Deaf community. However, due to gender divisions within the nineteenth-century college community, further analysis reveals that Gallaudet, despite the alleged uniqueness of its mission and the unifying characteristic of deafness, was similar to other institutions of higher learning that were physically and socially a place exclusively for white males.⁶⁶

The female students were astutely aware of their “place” within the elite Deaf institution. In the fall of 1887, theoretically and physically, the women did not have a place, as intangible walls barricaded them from complete inclusion within the college. Throughout the coeducation experimental period, the women were treated as “outsiders.” While some of their male counterparts viewed their dormancy in the first few years at the institution as a form of weakness and dependence, the women began to take action.⁶⁷ Taking extracurricular activities into their own hands, the women started their own organization in response to their exclusion from the male-only literary society. The O.W.L.S. (an acronym whose definition is still a tightly held secret) was established in 1892, marking one of the first attempts by the women to make a place for themselves at the institution.

One challenge women faced was that they did not have a physical place for their meetings, although male students had a designated “reading room” on campus. Occasionally, the females were permitted to use the library at the Kendall School, the primary school on campus, for a pseudo “sitting” room. The gesture of giving the women their own sitting room within the primary school reinforced the perception the campus community had of women—they were denigrated to the status of children with whom they shared space. Furthermore, the women had access to only secondhand newspapers given to them after their male peers were finished reading them. The O.W.L.S. rejected the meeting space within Kendall School and borrowed Professor Samuel Porter’s private library to hold their tri-weekly meetings.⁶⁸ The retired professor of philosophy and mental science had resided on Kendall Green for over thirty years.⁶⁹ His empathy for the female students’ situation may have evolved from his prominent family background. His father, Noah Porter, was a former president of Yale University and his sister, Sarah, was an educator as well, establishing a seminary for women.⁷⁰

The O.W.L.S. quickly developed larger aspirations for their organization than their male cohorts had for their literary society. These aspirations included dramatic and social aspects. The women soon realized that although society allowed for women to share their intellectual ideas and opinions, their “voices” were only being heard among themselves, behind closed-door meetings. After a few private meetings, the O.W.L.S. began to hold open forums to discuss literature and to demonstrate their theatrical interests. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the O.W.L.S. organization had evolved to serve a dual purpose, not only for literary discussions, but as an active response to women’s marginalized place at the college.

The leaders of the O.W.L.S. began to exhibit their agency on campus in other ways under the leadership of Agatha Tiegel, the organization’s first president and a member of the second class of women to attend Gallaudet, and May Martin, treasurer and secretary, from the fourth class of women.⁷¹ Recognizing the need for a school publication, Tiegel, Martin, and the O.W.L.S. were influential in the founding of the Buff and Blue newspaper in 1892. Although the concept of a college publication had been discussed in previous years, because of monetary and leadership reasons, the idea was rejected.⁷² President Gallaudet knew too well of the bleak history of independent papers established for the Deaf community, many of which were abandoned, and he wanted to avoid such “humiliation.”⁷³ Therefore, he appeared to have a predisposition against embarking on a new publication. With the persistence of a group of female students along with some of their male cohorts, however, President Gallaudet granted permission for the newspaper under a conditional agreement that the students would recruit over one hundred and fifty subscribers before the first publication, to ensure the newspaper’s success.⁷⁴ Although Martin has been credited for the innovation of the news-paper, her leadership role stopped there.

Historically, the women’s role within the Deaf community has been one of support and spectatorship for their male leaders.⁷⁵ Perhaps Martin declined the coveted position of editor-in-chief in an effort to make sure President Gallaudet did not close it down because of female leadership, or perhaps she did so to build male alliances.⁷⁶ Although a male student assumed the role of Buff and Blue editor-in-chief, the female students continued to influence the publication. Tiegel gained a spot on the editorial team, while Martin contributed numerous articles. For the next eighteen years, article contributions and editorial assistant positions were the extent of involvement for the women. It was not until 1910 that a woman, Alice Nicholson, would hold the position of editor-in-chief of the college newspaper at Gallaudet. It would be another seventeen years until the position was granted again to a female student, Alice McVan, in 1927.⁷⁷

Continuing their initiatives on campus, the female students established Gallaudet College’s first basketball team in 1896. Nine years later their male counterparts set up their own team. It is not surprising that the female students founded the first basketball team, as they seemed to explore areas of social interest that the male students had not already occupied. Although the team’s schedule consisted of only three games, all against the same organization, Sanatory Gymnasium, the females maintained an undefeated record for three consecutive seasons.⁷⁸

The women of the O.W.L.S. used their 1896 public forum in Chapel Hall as another outlet to publicize the institution’s treatment of them as inferior. While most literary meetings included recitations of essays or comparative literature dialogues, this group of women decided to make a more prominent expression. The highlight of the event was a performance piece entitled “Our Side.” From a male student’s perspective, the Buff and Blue recounted the female student’s performance.

The tableau represented Miss Block, ‘96, at the top of an immense ladder, erected on the stage, about to grasp a ponderous diploma.

Actions speak louder than words. In this case, without a single sign, the women clearly depicted their experiences of inequality and oppression at the institution. The ladder represented the hierarchy of education, while the female students standing underneath the woman at the top of ladder were indicative of her only source of support at the college. This dramatic performance was well ahead of its time, and it was a precursor to a 1915 drawing by suffragist Blanche Ames. Ames’s drawing also depicts a woman climbing the ladder of progress. From the bottom up, each step represents advancement for women: education, property, professions, business, votes for women, and true democracy (fig. 1). Rather than a ponderous diploma inhibiting the growth of women, Ames’s work depicts two flying devil-pigs labeled “injustice” and “prejudice” attacking a woman as she reaches toward the next step to equality.

Conscious of the societal and institutional limitations on their actions, the female students carefully chose venues in which to express their discontentment with the patriarchal institution. “Presentation Day” at Gallaudet College (similar to today’s commencement ceremony) was held annually at the beginning of May. The celebration included orations and dissertations presented by students of the graduating class. With a large, captive audience consisting of congressmen, parents, alumni, and leaders of the Deaf community, the female students astutely chose this ceremony as another one of their outlets. In 1893, Agatha Tiegel became the first woman to graduate from the college with a bachelor’s degree. Tiegel’s presentation was entitled “The Intellect of Women,” and it openly challenged the inherent belief that female students were intellectually inferior to their male cohorts.⁸⁰ Tiegel began with a powerful statement. The apparent inferiority of woman’s intellect is to be attributed to many restrictive circumstances. We are so accustomed to behold her in a stage of development so far below her powers that we do not apprehend the full evil of these circumstances.⁸¹ Tiegel’s oration sought to dispel the myth that women could not be successful college graduates. She concluded her address by stating, “there yet remains a large fund of prejudice to overcome, of false sentiment to combat, of narrow-minded opposition to triumph over.”⁸² While Tiegel never specifically mentions Gallaudet College in her speech, she made abundantly clear the unsatisfactory circumstances that female students endured while attending the college and highlighted the gendered division on campus.

Two years later, May Martin, valedictorian of her graduating class, titled her oration based on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem, “The Chambered Nautilus.” She too addressed an audience with great weight, as the keynote speaker of the graduation ceremony was the Honorable William L. Wilson, postmaster general.⁸³ At first glance, this topic seems to have little to do with coeducation at the institution; however, her address was saturated with metaphors. Her description of the life of a nautilus, a shell growing at the bottom of the sea, parallels that of the coeds due to the similarities in societal status and living environment.

We are filled with reverential admiration when we observe the pains which nature has taken to beautify even when the unseen portions of a shell habitant at the bottom of the sea. Its dim, dreaming life reminds us of the low scale in the order of creation upon which the Nautilus is placed. Yet there is still a prophecy of something higher. Living amid the darkness and dreams did not hinder.⁸⁴

Martin capitalized on the metaphor of the sea as the social environment that vastly limited women’s ability to exhibit their intelligence, strength, and skills. The female students were the beautiful shells, unnoticed, “chambered” beneath a sea of patriarchy.

In the same tradition, Laura McDill, a graduate of the Iowa School for the Deaf, presented her oration “It Is Fate” to the influential audience at the 1896 Presentation Day ceremonies. Her definition of fate was something that is “never heard or seen, but stands behind us and casts its dread shadow over all.” Although McDill conceded that fate may determine opportunity in life, she also noted, “nothing can work me damage but myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am I a real sufferer but by my own fault.”⁸⁵ Her experience at Gallaudet reflected a similar sentiment to her graduation address. Fate may have determined her second-class status at Gallaudet College; however, she sought to change the injustice through her involvement in extracurricular activities and efforts to make a place for women at the college. Emma Kershner, captain of the 1896 women’s basketball team, cast member in the “Our Side” performance a year prior, and graduate of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, opened her poignant 1897 oration, “What the World Owes to Woman,” with the following,

The problem of woman’s position or ‘sphere,’—or her duties, responsibilities, rights, and influence, as woman,—has been, and is still a matter of debate. There has existed in the mind of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.⁸⁶ This was the last documented address of the century to encompass the underlying and explicit messages of a woman’s place, or lack thereof, at Gallaudet College. Kershner’s address summarized a history of patriarchy and discrimination toward women, highlighting famously powerful women such as Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary Lyon, founder of Mt. Holyoke College. Kershner used this venue to exemplify the influence of women throughout history, even though in present day, she argued, her gender was still viewed as subordinate.

Throughout the late 1890s, the women continued to make a theoretical place for themselves within the institution. In 1895, May Martin became the first female faculty member at Gallaudet College. She received a letter at her home in New York from Edward Miner Gallaudet several months after her graduation from the college, inviting her to teach English at the college and at Kendall School.⁸⁷ Not only was her field of instruction gendered, but being female also made her a prime candidate and motherly figure for the elementary students. The only other instructor to hold a dual position at both the college and the primary school was Arthur Bryant, the art and drawing teacher, who also happened to be the lowest paid instructor at Gallaudet College, just under Martin.⁸⁸ After teaching at the college for just four years, Martin’s salary increased to five hundred dollars per year. Her male counterparts made on average more than double her salary, even though some began working at the college after she had.⁸⁹ Martin’s position at the institution was significant for the future of women on campus, providing a female ally at the faculty level. However, Martin’s tenure was short lived; she resigned from the college in 1900, after receiving her master’s degree, to marry Henry Stafford, a fellow Gallaudet College alumnus. Stafford was a clerk and bookkeeper for an iron mining company in Minnesota, where the couple resided after their marriage.⁹⁰

By the turn of the century, the female students were successful in attaining one of their goals, etching a permanent place for themselves within campus society. However, the women still lacked a tangible residence of their own. During their first two years at Gallaudet College, they lived in House One with President Gallaudet. In 1889, the women were moved to the main building of the primary department, more commonly known as Old Fowler Hall, and forced to share corridors with girls from Kendall school. Meanwhile, the male students had their own dormitory called Dawes House. At the turn of the century, the female students were relocated again. This time they were moved across campus to faculty row, residing in what is now referred to as Denison House.⁹¹ The constant relocating of the female students as well as pairing them with primary school students exemplifies the administrators’ perception of the women as inferior and childlike. Excuses, such as deficient funding and lack of necessity, inhibited the female students from achieving their goal of a permanent residence until the reconstruction of Fowler Hall in 1915.

Conclusion

The shared characteristic of deafness inspired the creation of a separate college for Deaf students in 1864, but it did not tear down the boundaries of gender within academe. The treatment of women as second-class citizens in higher education characterized the hearing community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it characterized the Deaf community. Even gaining admittance to Gallaudet College was a struggle for women, and Deaf and hearing women worked together to pressure the college to accept women. Once the doors finally were open to them, Deaf women’s experiences at Gallaudet College resembled those of their hearing female counterparts. Treated as outsiders within their own community, the Deaf women sought to establish their own identity and carve their own niche. The pseudo-equality of women in higher education institutions, coupled with resistance met by their presence, led to the coalescence of female students in efforts to make a place for themselves on campus.

The similarities uniting hearing women with their Deaf kin in the experience of higher education in the United States suggest broad conclusions. One is that the bond of womanhood transcended that of being deaf in the realm of higher education, as hearing and Deaf women rallied to provide the latter with access to Gallaudet College. For the hearing women in the WACA, the status of a woman’s hearing was not as important as her second-class citizenship if denied higher education. A second conclusion is that the bond of maleness transcended deafness in higher education. Deaf community males, from President Gallaudet through at least a significant part of the college’s student body, resisted the admittance of women into their enclave. After women were admitted, they were denied equality with male students. A gendered lens of Gallaudet College history reveals tensions and complicates the previous image cast of the Deaf world as unified and homogenous, suggesting the powerful signifier of gender within the context of higher education in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, this paper suggests that historians need to reexamine their interpretations of general Deaf culture and ask to what extent boundaries were defined more by larger social constructions, such as gender, than by being Deaf or use of a common language alone.