African American Women In Higher Education Essay

Lucy Session who received a literary degree in 1850 and Mary Jane Patterson who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1862. According to Bennefield (1999), Fanny Jackson Coppin was the first African American women to become a principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. She is the first to be employed at an institution for higher learning. The primary entry into higher education was not easy for African American women. However, despite the opposition African American women pushed and pressed forward toward higher learning. According to Perkins (1983), by only thirty African American women in the United States had earned baccalaureate degrees compared to three hundred African Americans males and twenty-five hundred females. These statistics display that the progression was slow but African American women obtaining degrees in higher education was on the rise. African American women were determined to make a difference in society by pursuing degrees in higher education. According to Middleton (1993), Willa Player became President of Bennett College in 1955, which made her the first African American College President. …show more content…
Once again history was made in 1970 when Elaine Jones became the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Virginia and in 1993 the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Today, African American women are present in higher education as students, faculty, staff, and administrators; they have had to endure many obstacles and challenges to guarantee their involvement. (Challenges Affecting African American Women in Higher Education) In the early sixties the Supreme Court and federal legislation allowed more African American women to enter into institutions of higher learning as students, faculty, staff and administrators.