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Merze Tate and the Quest for Gender Equity at Howard University: 1942–1977

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Linda M. Perkins
Linda M. Perkins*
Affiliation:
Applied Women's Studies and Africana Studies Certificate Program, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California; e-mail: [email protected]
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This study discusses Merze Tate, a black woman faculty member at Howard University from 1942 to 1977, and her efforts throughout her tenure at the institution to obtain gender equity for women faculty. This study also discusses Tate's decades-long battle with Rayford Logan, chair of the history department of Howard. Both Harvard PhDs, their difficulties reflect both gender differences as well as professional jealously. Tate was the first black woman to earn a degree from Oxford University (International Relations, 1935) and the first black woman to earn a PhD from Harvard in the fields of government and international relations (1941). She joined the faculty at Howard University in 1942, as one of two women ever hired in the history department. She remained on the faculty until her retirement in 1977. Tate is significant not only for her academic accomplishments and her advocacy on behalf of women but also as one of the earliest tenured women faculty members at Howard. In addition, she was a part of a very small group of highly accomplished black women academics who devoted their lives to the education of black youth. In a 1946 study of black doctorate and professional degree holders, Harry Washington Greene noted that of the three hundred eighty-one recipients, only forty-five were women. Black women were overwhelmingly enrolled and graduated from teacher training colleges that were unaccredited and/or did not provide the curriculum to attend graduate school without taking an additional year of undergraduate studies. The time and cost factor were prohibitive and many black women attended summer schools for years to take courses to prepare them for a graduate degree program.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 516 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 History of Education Society 

References

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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