¹ Greene, Harry W., Holders of Doctorates among American Negroes (Boston, MA: Meador Press, 1946).Google Scholar

² Application for Foreign Fellowship for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, 1931, Vernie Tate Papers, box 219–1, folder 20, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC, hereafter referred to as the Tate Papers.Google Scholar

³ Tate, Merze, “Three Years in England,” Ivy Leaf Magazine 14, no. 1 (March 1936): 18–19,40.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid., 18.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., 40.Google Scholar

⁶ Ibid., 40.Google Scholar

⁷ For more information on the dean of women's position in HBCUs see Perkins, Linda M., “The National Association of College Women: Vanguard of Black Women's Leadership and Education, 1923–1954,” Journal of Education 172, no. 3 (1990): 65–75; Miller, Caroll L. and Anne, S. Pruitt-Logan's, Faithful to the Task at Hand: The Life of Lucy Diggs Slowe (New York: SUNY Press, 2012). Slowe was the first black women Dean of Women at Howard University. Her tenure as Dean was from 1922 to 1937.Google Scholar

⁸ Biographical Materials and CV, Tates Papers, box 219–1, folder 3, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁹ Merze Tate's Application to the Julius Rosenwald Fund, March 31, 1939, Julius Rosenwald Papers, box 451, folder 4 (1939–1943), Fisk University Archives, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Logan, Rayford W., Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York: New York University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

¹¹ Morrill Act of 1862 (7 U.S.C. § 301 et seq.) and the Morrill Act of 1890 (the Agricultural College Act of 1890 (26 Stat. 417, 7 U.S.C. § 321 et seq.).Google Scholar

¹² Logan, First Hundred Years, 258.Google Scholar

¹³ Greene, Negro Holders of Doctorates, 37.Google Scholar

¹⁴ On this topic see Linda Perkins’ “The History of Black Women Graduate Students, 1921–1948” in The Sage Handbook on African American Education, ed. Tillman, Linda C. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 53–65.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Barbara Solomon's book, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women's Higher Education (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985) devotes an entire chapter to this dilemma, see chapter eight. Also see Antler's, Joyce “‘After College, What?': New Graduates and the Family Claim,” American Quarterly 32 (Fall, 1980): 409–34.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 1999); Crenshaw, Kimberly, “Intersectionality: The Double Bind of Race and Gender,” Perspectives Magazine (2004): 4–7.Google Scholar

¹⁷ In HBCUs where African Americans served on their faculty, black women were readily hired. Church, Mary (later Terrell), one of the earliest black women graduates of Oberlin College (1884), accepted a teaching position at Wilberforce College in Ohio in 1885, which was founded by the African Episcopal Church prior to the Civil War (1856). Terrell recalled that she received numerous offers from Black colleges mostly in the Deep South. She decided on Wilberforce because of its location in Ohio. She noted that college educated black women were in great demand, noting, “The heads of institutions for colored youth were beginning to insist that the teachers employed should be college graduates, and there were so few colored women who met this requirement then that it was very easy for those who had to secure desirable positions.” Quote found in Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. 1968), 61.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Annual Report of the College of Liberal Arts, 1938, Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Library and Janken, Kenneth Robert, Logan, Rayford W. and the Dilemma of the African-American Intellectual (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), vii–319.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Countee Cullen to Dr. Thomas Jones, E., President of Fisk University, August 24, 1944, Thomas E. Jones Papers, box 50, folder number 21, Fisk University Archives, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.Google Scholar

²⁰ Mays, Benjamin E. to Jones, Thomas E., president of Fisk University, November 26, 1933; Mays, Benjamin E. to Jones, Thomas E., February 20, 1934; Mays, Benjamin E. to Jones, Thomas E., March 4, 1934; Mays, Benjamin E. to Jones, Thomas E., March 18, 1934; box 52, folder 22, Thomas Jones Papers; Western Union telegram from B. E. Mays to President Thomas E. Jones, Fisk University, April 11, 1934; Mays, B. E. to President Jones, Thomas E., April 10, 1934; Jones, Thomas E. to Mays, B. E., April 14, 1934; Mays, B. E. to Jones, Thomas E., April 17, 1934, box 52, folder 22, in Thomas E. Jones Papers, Fisk University, Fisk University Archives, Nashville, Tennessee, hereafter referred to as the Jones Papers. Google Scholar

²¹ Klein, Arthur J., “Survey of Negro Colleges and Universities,” Bulletin of the Bureau of Education of the Department of the Interior, no. 7 (1928): 1–956, box number 52, 23, Jones Papers.Google Scholar

²² Blauch, Lloyd E. and Jenkins, Martin D., Intensive Study of Selected Colleges for Negroes. National Survey of the Higher Education of Negroes, Miscellaneous, 1942, II, number 6, United States Office of Education; Charles S. Johnson, “The Faculty,” Journal of Educational Sociology 19, no. 8 (April 1946): 471–83.Google Scholar

²³ Thompson, Charles S. quoted in Louis Ray, “Competing Visions of Higher Education: The College of Liberal Arts Faculty and the Administration of Howard University, 1939–1960,” in Higher Education for African American before the Civil Rights Era, 1900–1964, Perspectives on the History of Higher Education 29, eds. Gasman, Marybeth and Geiger, Roger L. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), 153; Tenure and rank guidelines were completed at Howard in 1938, see 1938–1939 Annual Report of the College of Liberal Arts. Google Scholar

²⁴ See Jonathan Scott Holloway, Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris, Jr., Frazier, E. Franklin, Bunche, Ralph, 1919–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001); and Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009).Google Scholar

²⁵ Harris, Abrah, Just, Ernest, Bunche, Ralph, Thurman, Howard, Franklin, John Hope, and Mays, Benjamin E. are some of the noted scholars who left Howard for better professional opportunities. Only Eva Dykes, who left: Howard for religious reasons (to help build up the black Seventh Adventist Oakwood College), is the only tenured black woman faculty member to leave. However, women faculty at HBCUs frequently relocated to other institutions for a better salary and rank. This was indeed the case with Tate when she left Barber-Scotia after five years to join the faculty of Bennett College and left the following year to become Dean of Women at Morgan State College in Baltimore (1941) and left the following year to join the faculty of Howard (1942) where she stayed the remainder of her professional career (Tate Papers, box 219–2). Also, Flemmie Kittrell, after graduating from Hampton Institute (VA) with a bachelor's of science in Home Economics in 1924. She served for twelve years as Dean of Women at Bennett College during which time she earned a masters and doctoral degree from Cornell University (1935) in Home Economics with a specialty in Nutrition. Kittrell returned to Hampton in 1940 and served as Dean of Women until 1944. She went to Howard in 1944, two years after Tate where she became Chair of the Department of Home Economics and the founding Dean of the School of Home Economics. Like Tate, Kittrell remained at Howard the rest of her career when she retired in 1973, See Flemmie Kittrell's Oral History, Women of Courage, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA. August, 29, 1977.Google Scholar

²⁶ Dykes, Eva, Oral Interview, Women of Courage, Radcliffe College, Interview with Sadie Tanner Mossel Alexander, October 12, 1977 in Alexander Family Papers, University of Pennsylvania Archives, Philadelphia, PA.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Kittrell, Flemmie Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

²⁸ Diary entry, September 3, 1942, Rayford Logan Papers, box 3, folder 7, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

²⁹ Diary entries 7, September 11, 1942, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

³⁰ Diary Entry, July 17, 1943, Logan Papers, box 4, folder 2.Google Scholar

³¹ Merze Tate to J. St. Clair Price, Dean of Liberal Arts, Howard University, July 17, 1945, Merze Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 29, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³² Merze Tate to J. St. Clair Price, Dean of Liberal Arts, Howard University, July 17, 1945, Tate Papers; Tate was well versed in a variety of fields. While her degree was in Government and International Relations—she had five subfields including Geography, American History, and European History. Hence, while her degree was in Politics and International Relations—she taught in Howard's history department where she specialized in Diplomatic History. See Tate's CV and biographical papers, Tate Papers, box 219, folder 2, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid.Google Scholar

³⁴ Logan, Rayford to J. St. Clair Price, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Howard University, June 6, 1945, Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 29, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³⁵ Diary Entry, April 12, 1947, Logan Papers, box 4, folder 4.Google Scholar

³⁶ Diary Entry, August 30, 1947, Logan Papers, box 4, folder 4.Google Scholar

³⁷ Logan, Rayford to Lawson, Ruth, Mount Holyoke College Institute on the UN, May 26, 1949, Rayford Logan Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³⁸ Both Logan's diaries and Tate's Papers have continuous documentation of their ongoing professional and personal battles.Google Scholar

³⁹ Tate, Merze to J. St. Clair Price, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, October 4, 1951, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Tate, Merze to Nelson, William Stuart and J. St. Clair Price, October 4, 1951, Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 29, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Tate to J. St. Clair Price, October 29, 1951, Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 29, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴² Tate to J. St. Clair Price, Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 29, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴³ Tate to J. St. Clair Price, October 29, 1951, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Tate to J. St. Clair Price, October 29, 1951, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Constitution of the Women's Faculty Club, March 1953, Tate Papers, box 219–17, folder 20, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Mrs. G. Frederick Stanton, “Howard University Faculty Club: A Brief History,” Faculty Wives Club Papers, folder 1, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For example, the October 1951 newsletter noted that Dr. Tate had been a Fulbright Fellow and had lectured in India and the Far East, Dr. Flemmie Kittrell also had a Fulbright award and spent a year in India organizing a Division of Home Economics for a college there; Dr. Anne Cooke of the theater department also received a Fulbright to spend the year of 1951–1952 at the University of Oslo. Another woman, Vera Hunton, received her doctorate at McGill University. There were other announcements highlighting milestones in their careers. Women's Faculty Newsletter, October 1951, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The Women's Faculty Club of Howard University's Newsletter, Tate Papers, box 219–7, folder 20, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁵² When Anna Gardner Johnson died in 1969, her obituary in the prominent black newspaper, the Afro-American (Baltimore), praised her for knowing her place as a wife. She was praised for being a “quiet unassuming woman,” who “faded into the background of her illustrious husband.” “She took her place in women's affairs without being obtrusive. She did not try to be vice-president of Howard or a dynamic feminine leader. She played with dignity her role of a wife. No one could ask more of a woman than that.” Afro-American (Baltimore), March 15, 1969, 5.Google Scholar

⁵³ Minutes of the Committee on AAUW Accreditation meeting, March 3, 1961, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Tate in Ferebee's Oral History, Black Women Oral History Project, December 28 and 31, 1979, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, 34.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Minutes of the Committee on AAUW Accreditation, March 28, 1961, Tate Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ For examples, presidents of the FFC included Dorothy Ferebee, MD, who in 1924 became the first Black woman to earn a medical degree from Tufts Medical School; Ruth Ella Moore, PhD, who in 1933 first black women to earn a PhD in Bacteriology from The Ohio State University, joined the faculty at Howard in 1941; Gertrude B. Rivers, who received a PhD in English from Cornell in 1939, also joined Howard's faculty in 1941; Inabel Lindsay, Dean of the School of Social Work.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ “Report of the Status of Faculty in College of Liberal Arts by Department, Rank and Sex with Number of Rank and Salary, 1953–54.” In possession of author, sent by Merze Tate, November 1987.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See folder 14 in the Logan Papers for the repeated correspondence on this issue.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Untitled, September 23, 1954, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Tate to Nelson, Stuart, October 16, 1956; Nelson, Stuart to Tate, , October 31, 1956, Tate Papers, box 219–4, folder 17, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁶² Tate in Ferebee, Dorothy Bounding, December 28 and 31, Black Women Oral History Project, Radcliffe College, 34.Google Scholar

⁶³ Diary entry, December 9, 1954, Logan Papers, box 6, folder 1.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Diary entry, December 9, 1954, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Diary entry, December 11, 1954, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Letter, December 11, 1954, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Diary entry, November 28, 1957, Logan Papers; others also believed Logan had an unhealthy obsession with Tate. His department secretary told him that John Hope Franklin was worried about him. She noted that Franklin was “fond of him” but was concerned about Logan's treatment of Tate. She said that Dr. Franklin told her that Tate was experiencing family problems—her sister-in-law had just lost a hand and that her sister had breast cancer. Diary entry, August 25, 1956, Logan Papers, box 6, folder 4.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Untitled, May 13, 1955, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ For a bibliography of Tate's work, see Joseph Harris's “Professor Merze Tate (1905-): A Profile,” in Profiles, The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Howard University, Washington, DC, December 1981, 23–24.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Diary entry, December 21, 1956, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁷¹ For lengthy discussions of Johnson's battles with various Howard faculty and administrators, see Logan's Howard University (particularly Logan's characterization of Johnson's “vendetta” against Emmett Scott, Secretary-Treasurer), p. 288; see also Kenneth, R. Manning's biography of renown biologist Ernest Just and his battles with Johnson, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); also see Williams, , In Search of the Talented Tenth, his long list of Black male faculty and administrators with whom Johnson clashed, 63.Google Scholar

⁷² Interview with Lindsay, Inabel Burns, May 20–June 7, 1977, Black Women's Oral History Project, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, 24.Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Diary entry, March 4, 1943, Logan Papers, box 4, folder 2, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Diary entry, October 22, 1954, Logan Papers, box 6, folder 1.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Interview with Radcliffe College, December 28 and 31, 1979, 34 in Women of Courage Collection, Radcliffe Black Women's Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ In one of Logan's many complaints about Tate in his diary, he commented on a luncheon Tate sponsored on behalf of the Radcliffe College Club that President Johnson attended. Logan wrote in annoyance: “President Johnson spent fifteen minutes praising Merze Tate” and called her “one of the world's greatest historians.” The guests at the luncheon included ambassadors and other renowned guests. May 3, 1956, Logan Papers, Library of Congress.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Transcript of an oral history interview of Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley, January 28 and February 10, 1993, Howard University Oral Histories, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Library, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

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⁸¹ Ibid.Google Scholar

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⁸³ Ibid., 31.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Pages of interview of Tate with Dykes received by author via U.S. mail in November 1987.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Merze Tate to President James Nabritt, no date, Tate Papers, box 219–5, folder 16, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Diary entry, March 14, 1964, Logan Papers, box 6, folder 6.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ One of his diary entries noted that Tate asked him for some of his research to reference when she went on a Fulbright Fellowship to India. He stated one of the topics the Indians were interested in was the Negro in the United States. Logan noted he found this amusing since Tate always “sneered and belittled” research on Negro history. Diary entry, October 1, 1950, Logan Papers, box 5, folder 2.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Logan, April 19, 1960, Logan Papers.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Janken, Rayford W. Logan, 73.Google Scholar

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⁹³ Cooper, Anna Julia, A Voice from the South (Xenia, OH: The Aldine Printing House, 1892), 134.Google Scholar

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⁹⁵ Baker, Thomas Nelson, “The Negro Woman,” Alexander's Magazine 2, no. 2, June 15, 1906, 84.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Ferebee, Dorothy Bouding, Oral History, Radcliffe College, 28, December 31, 1979, in Women of Courage Collection, Radcliffe Oral History Project, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, 35.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Lindsay, Anabeth, oral history, Radcliffe College, 1978, 4.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Ibid., 47; Commuting marriages among Black academics were not uncommon—see Perkins, Linda M., “For the Good of the Race: Married African American Academics: A Historical Perspective,” in Academic Couples: Problems and Promises, ed. Ferber, Marianne A. and Loeb, Jane W. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 80–105.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Murray, Pauli, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (New York, Harper and Row, 1987), 184.Google Scholar

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¹⁰² Merze Tate biographical sketch in the Merze Tate Papers Guide, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar