women at emory: the past
Ginger Cain

When Mamie Haygood, known as “Emory’s first coed,” enrolled as a freshman at Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, in 1883, could she have envisioned the day when small, rural, all-male Emory College would become part of a destination university in a major city and would admit women into all divisions and schools?

When Eleonore Raoul became Emory’s first woman law student, could she have had any idea that her own experiences with women’s organizations would be echoed in the develop ment at Emory of a Women’s Caucus, a President’s Commission on the Status of Women, and a Center for Women?

When Goodrich White, who was president when Emory became fully coeducational in 1953, stated that “we do not plan to build any more dormitories, add any new courses, or change our educational structure because of this decision,” could he have imagined that women’s studies would become an academic program and would rank first in a national study of faculty productivity?

Perhaps a bit of history will put those three individuals and their stories in context. Although Emory College was a men’s school from the time of its founding in 1836, one of the most intriguing stories in the school’s nineteenth-century history is that of Mamie Haygood, the daughter of Emory College President Atticus Green Haygood. She began attending Emory College classes in 1883, enrolled as a sixteen-year-old freshman in 1884, and was a full member of the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes. Emory would not grant a degree to a woman, however, so Mamie had to transfer to Wesleyan—a Methodist woman’s college in Macon, Georgia—to begin her senior year in 1887 and receive her diploma in 1888. Ironically, this pioneering woman student was known both as “Emory’s first coed” and as a “non-graduate” of Emory College.

When Emory University received its charter in 1915 and began to develop its Atlanta campus, Chancellor Warren Akin Candler stated his strong opposition to coeducation in his annual report to the Board of Trustees in 1919: “The departments of medicine and law especially should not be open to women. Young men and young women working together in a dissecting room, or hearing together lectures on physiology and anatomy, would in my judgment, create a most indelicate and injurious situation. And, women lawyers would not promote justice in the courts.”

By the time Candler stated this, however, a woman already was enrolled in the law school. Eleonore Raoul had wanted to enroll in Emory’s new law school, but was initially prevented from doing so. Not one to take no for an answer, Raoul waited until Chancellor Candler was conveniently absent from the city to register for her first year of law studies in 1917. When the chancellor returned and learned that there was a woman in the law school, he permitted her to continue. The annual report of the law school for that year noted: “The Chancellor . . . takes occasion to put on record that he does not approve the entrance of women into the Schools of Law, Medicine, and Theology, believing that it is neither correct in principle nor wise in policy.”

The School of Theology (organized 1914) and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (organized 1919) enrolled women from the start. The School of Nursing (founded 1905, affiliated 1922) and the Library School (founded 1905, affiliated 1925) provided the majority of the women students who enrolled during the first half-century of the new university’s existence. The School of Law (organized 1915) and the School of Medicine (affiliated 1915) admitted women in 1917 and 1942, respectively. When they became part of Emory, the School of Dentistry (affiliated 1944) and the School of Public Health (organized 1990) already counted women among their students.

By March 1953, when the Board of Trustees decided in a 13-6 vote to permit full coeducation in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Business Administration, more than 1,500 women—mostly nurses, librarians, and teachers—already had received Emory degrees. In fall 1953, seventy-six women entered Emory College under the new guidelines permit ting women to enroll on a regular basis rather than by special exception. Across the entire University, 13 percent of Emory’s students were women. Despite President White’s statements, the University began to change significantly and irreversibly. Women’s organizations, women campus leaders, women’s residence halls, and women’s physical education classes were among the earliest and most visible adaptations. Even though there had been women staff for decades and a number of women faculty members in the professional schools prior to the coming of coeducation, the ensu ing decades brought more women into faculty, administrative, and governance roles as well as into the student body.

Women at Emory, whether few or many, knew that work ing together, supporting each other, and speaking boldly through their actions would enhance their potential to be full partners in the process of education and in the life of the campus. The Emory Woman’s Club, founded in 1919, provides a useful example. Initially founded to provide traditional social connections for faculty wives, it gradually expanded its role as a network that included women faculty, staff, and administrators in their own right. In the first decade of coeducation, women became the leaders of the major student organizations and the editors of the prominent student publications; women living in residence halls established their own council management system; women organized a female chorale to complement the all-male glee club; women formed social clubs and petitioned for the clubs to become chapters of national sororities; and women established their own system of honors and honor societies.

In the 1970s, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided comprehensive federal laws and regulations to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions. Its impact was felt at Emory as well as at other universities. Many parallel organizations for men and women students merged to form more effective and inclusive groups. Advocacy for women’s rights, for equality in pay and benefits, and support in the face of isolation led to the formation of groups such as the Emory Women’s Caucus (1974), the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (1976), Choices (1987), and the Center for Women at Emory (1992). Interdisciplinary and critical study of women and gender led to the establishment of a program tha t would become the Department of Women’s Studies (1987).

If Mamie Haygood, who should have been eligible to earn an Emory College diploma in 1888, had been able to see a century or so into the future, she would have been amazed by and proud of the progress made by women at Emory. If Eleonore Raoul, who was active in woman suffrage efforts and in the League of Women Voters, had peered into her crystal ball in 1917, she would have championed the call for women to work together not only in the present but also in the future. And Goodrich White never would have said that Emory would not be changed by the coming of women to the campus in ever-increasing numbers.

Virginia J. H. (Ginger) Cain 77C 82G is university archivist and director of library public programs and alumni relations. She speaks and writes about the history of Emory and has curated several major exhibitions relating to the University’s history.