October 31, 2008

October 31, 1918: From the Diary of Martha Barksdale

Student Martha Barksdale recounted "quite an enjoyable party" on this date in her diary entry of November 26.



For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

October 21, 2008

Sports at William and Mary

It is the start of the 2008 Homecoming week at the College William and Mary. Ideally, this post would detail homecoming at the College in 1918, focusing on student activities leading up to an exciting football game. However, little information is available on the football season in 1918 and Homecoming was not marked at the College until 1926. With the demands of the Students' Army Training Corps, scarce equipment, and no head coach, the success of the football team suffered. The Colonial Echo yearbook of 1919 was understated in describing the season as "incomplete and rather unsuccessful."

Despite the lackluster performance of the football team, athletics played an important role on campus, and sports like basketball and baseball regained popularity after the end of World War I. Janet Coleman Kimbrough remembered the strong level of school spirit among the students in her oral history interview in the 1970s:

It was a period when college spirit was very strong. There wasn't any question about supporting your team; you just naturally did. We used to have rallies, (so-called), just before the big games of the season, and part of the initiation of the ducs [underclassmen] was that they were required to learn certain cheers. We didn't have girl cheerleaders at all. I don't remember even considering them. The cheerleader would have a megaphone and would direct the cheering, but there wasn't any special costume or special activity on the part of the cheerleader; he was just to see that everybody made noise.


Basketball was especially popular on campus. Women students played among themselves, separated into the "Orange" (sometimes called "Yellow") and "Black" teams. Student
Martha Barksdale was widely recognized as one of the best players, and even admitted to letting the other team win once in a while to keep them interested in playing. They also participated in "aesthetic dancing," drilling (during the war), tennis, and swimming.




Members of the "Orange" team (top): Martha Barksdale, Catherine Dennis, Alice Person, Ruth Harris, Edna Reid, Celeste Ross. Members of the "Black" team (bottom): Elizabeth Scott, Margaret Thornton, Mary Haile, Margaret Bridges, Janet Coleman, Louise Reid, Alice Burke. From The Colonial Echo.








How male students might have supported women's basketball is unclear, but everyone seems to have cheered on the men's basketball team. According to Barksdale, students would ring the bells on campus after the men won a game, then gather for a celebratory bonfire and rally either on campus or on Duke of Gloucester Street. The police monitored these celebrations, occasionally arresting students for being too loud or for making the bonfire too large.


As part of Homecoming festivities, check out The Wham Bam Big Band performing at Swem Library on Friday October 24th at 3:30pm in conjunction with the exhibit "Ringing Far and Near: Student Music and Song at the College of William and Mary." Other events in
Swem Library include: tours of the library this Friday and Saturday at 1:30, 2, 3:30, and 4pm; tours of the Media Center on Friday from 3-4:30pm; and Ben & Jerry's ice cream from 3:30-4:30pm.

Mary Comes to the College with William encourages students, alumni, and other visitors to enjoy Homecoming and celebrate responsibly (please, no bonfires).


Editions of The Colonial Echo are available in the Special Collections Research Center and Swem Library. An excerpt of the transcription of Kimbrough's interview is available online and the complete transcription is available from the University Archives Oral History Collection in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.


For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

October 15, 2008

Rules for Women

The College of William and Mary's Dean of Women, Dr. Caroline Tupper, was quick to create and enforce rules for the College's new students. One of the first women, Janet Coleman Kimbrough, was asked about those rules during an interview in the 1970s for the College's oral history project. A list of those rules as recalled by Kimbrough:

-After dinner, the women had to stay in their dormitory, Tyler Hall (the present-day Reves Center), until all lights went out at midnight.

-While in their dorm, the women had a mandatory study hall from 8pm-10pm. During this time, they were not supposed to leave their rooms and they had to be quiet.

-At 10pm, the women were allowed to wander between rooms and talk.

-At 10:30pm, all women students were required to go to bed, unless they got special permission to stay up and study until midnight.

-If a woman received special permission to stay up until midnight, she had to study in a different room than her own, so she would not disturb others.

Kimbrough recalled that Dr. Tupper was "constantly trying to avoid making hard and fast rules," and was more interested in "establish[ing] a 'tradition'" for future women at the College.

While these rules may seem restrictive, the women found ways to enjoy themselves. Kimbrough describes a "social hour" the women created between the end of dinner and before the start of the 8pm study hall. During this time, she explained that "someone would play the piano, and they would roll back the rugs and dance."











Tyler Hall, 1919. From Catherine Dennis' scrapbook.


Regulations for student behavior from the 19th century to the mid-20th century are available in the Student Rules Collection in the Special Collections Research Center. An excerpt of the transcription of Kimbrough's interview is available online and the complete transcription is available from the University Archives Oral History Collection in the Special Collections Research Center. Catherine Dennis' scrapbook is also available in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Jordan Ecker.

For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish
; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

October 10, 2008

A Step Away from 1918-1919: Barksdale Field

On October 10, 1975, the field located adjacent to Phi Beta Kappa Hall and William Barton Rogers Hall, at the corner of Jamestown Road and Landrum Drive on the College of William and Mary campus was renamed to honor a member of the first class of women students and long-time Physical Education Professor, Martha Barksdale. Barksdale Field has evolved into a venue for intramural football and soccer by students.


For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

October 8, 2008

Student Groups for Women, 1918-1919

Participating in campus activities was a challenge for the first class of women at the College of William and Mary. Women were not allowed in most of the activities or clubs that played a large role in campus life. Fraternities, literary societies, athletic teams, and the student newspaper, The Flat Hat, were closed to female membership. In its first year, coeducation was not expected to extend much further than the classroom.

Prohibited from joining many of the established campus organizations, women created their own groups in which they could participate and socialize. The Women's Student Council, initially presided over by Florence Harris and later by Martha Barksdale, was one such group. According to The Colonial Echo, "the purpose of the organization is to represent and to further the best interests of the women student body, to regulate the conduct of the women under authority of the college, and to promote responsibility, loyalty, and self-control."

The Alpha Club was a multi-faceted organization. Headed by Celeste Ross its first year, the group sought to "develop departments of Music, Dramatics, Literary Activities, and other interests, all united in name and general purpose in the original Club."

Members of the Alpha Club. From The Colonial Echo.

More mysterious is a group called the "P.P." Club. Catherine Dennis' scrapbook contains several photos of the club's officers (she was vice president; Alice Burke was president and Martha Barksdale served as secretary), but no mention of its purpose or interest. The club may not have been an official organization as it does not appear in the yearbook, either. The "P.P." Club: (l-r) Martha Barksdale, Alice Burke, Catherine Dennis. From Catherine Dennis' scrapbook.

Still, men and women were not completely separated in their activities. Ruth Conkey was an assistant editor on The Colonial Echo for 1919, both sexes were encouraged to participate in the "Cercle Francais" French club, and everyone could attend events such as the literary society debates, films, dances, and sporting events. Full integration into campus life would take time, but the first class of women made a good start of it.

The Flat Hat is available online; editions of The Colonial Echo and Catherine Dennis' scrapbook are available in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.

For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

October 3, 2008

October 1918: Changes in Williamsburg

That women were now enrolled and attending classes at the College of William and Mary was not perhaps the greatest change affecting Williamsburg in the fall of 1918. World War I introduced new training facilities and industry to the area. Through the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) based at William and Mary, male students could enlist in the military and still attend college with government-paid tuition. The Corps became such a central feature on campus that it became common for an Army bugle to signal the end of classes. In an interview Y.O. Kent, a member of the SATC, recalled marching and drilling around campus, as well as guarding an aircraft landing strip "outside town in the middle of winter." Meanwhile, Williamsburg itself was in the process of moderninizing its infrastructure to cope with the demands of the war. And all over the country, traditional ideas and morals were being challenged by new opinions and behavior.

Janet Coleman Kimbrough, Williamsburg resident as well as a member of the College's first class of women, later detailed a number of physcial and social adjustments that occured throughout the town:

We had daylight savings [time]; of course we'd never had [it] before. Automobile traffic was just really getting under way, and the army stimulated that tremendously. There were these military trucks continually coming through town carrying loads of military materials down to the ports and the army camps here. They tore up the road. We had no paved roads, you see, and we had two very bad winters, and they tore up the roads terribly and turned them into just almost an impossible morass -- especially the eastern end of Duke of Gloucester Street. You really couldn't get across it. You had to walk sometimes three or four blocks up the street before you could go from one side to another because of this deep mud. I remember stepping in and losing my shoe in it; there was no hope of finding it; it was way down in the mud. To complicate matters still further, the town decided to put in water and sewage -- or had decided just ahead of all this -- and they dug the street up to put in sewer pipes, and that made it that much worse. They began the thing thinking they were going to be able to finish it quickly and then because of the shortage of materials and shortage of labor and so forth, it didn't get finished as quickly as they thought. The result was that the streets were terribly torn up. Of course, the fact that almost every family had some member involved in the armed forces -- there was just so much change at that time that coeducation was a minor matter. Girls' skirts were going up; of course, the flapper and jazz and the type of dancing -- everything was "upsetting the morals and the morality of the young people," and we were coming in for a great deal of criticism. Just everything was changing; the coeducation was just one small item, really.

Janet Coleman Kimbrough (left) with Alice Person, 1919. From Catherine Dennis' scrapbook.















The above oral history excerpts are from interviews with Emily Williams, as part of an oral history project of the College conducted between 1974 and 1976. A longer excerpt of Kimbrough's interview may be found online. Catherine Dennis' scrapbook is available in the Special Collections Research Center. Taps, a booklet commemorating the Students' Army Training Corps, is available for viewing online.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.

For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.