‘Ahead of Its Time’

Richmond’s Hartshorn Memorial College pioneered an atmosphere of higher learning that nurtured and prepared black women for a lifetime of leadership

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Less than 20 years after the Civil War left Richmond smoldered and shaken, a new school, Hartshorn Memorial College, shifted the paradigm of higher education for black women in America. At its founding in 1883, a few teachers taught the inaugural class of 58 women in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Jackson Ward.

Origin Story

Three individuals were largely responsible for the conception and founding of Hartshorn Memorial College. In a local and national atmosphere of racism by white people against black people, these three — two white men, Dr. Lyman Beecher Tefft and Joseph Hartshorn, and a white woman, Carrie Dyer — engineered the founding of one of the earliest colleges for black women in the country.

“Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy, had by that time reverted to being dominated by the racist element — that had come back again pretty soon [after the Civil War],” says Dr. Raymond Hylton, the author of “Virginia Union University: Campus History” and a professor of history at VUU for the past 30 years. “They were eroding the gains made by Reconstruction. It was a racist environment. Education for African-Americans, male and female, was not encouraged.”

Against this backdrop in Richmond, Tefft and Dyer were teaching together at Roger Williams University, over 600 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee. They found that their educational interests were similar, as were their convictions about equality for all people — starting with education for blacks.

“[Tefft and Dyer] came to the idea that the best way for women to be educated was by single-sex education,” Hylton says. “They thought to create a single-sex college exclusively for African-American women.”

With this idea burning in their minds, Tefft and Dyer approached businessman Joseph Hartshorn of Providence, Rhode Island. Related to Hartshorn by marriage, Tefft knew that the retired abolitionist minister, a millionaire who had founded Providence Steam and Gas Pipe Co., had pockets — and ideals — deep enough to fund their idea.

His wife, Rachel Hartshorn, whose untimely death in 1882 spurred the former preacher into action when Tefft and Dyer approached him, shared Hartshorn’s personal beliefs.

“As she was dying, she told her husband, Joseph, ‘There’s something I want you to do for me,’ but she died before she finished speaking,” Hylton says. Through his grief, Hartshorn suspected that his wife’s dying wish was for him to set up a college for black women. “It was an idea that she had expressed to him many times before.”

Hartshorn pledged $43,000 to found the school, the equivalent of nearly $1 million today. With Hartshorn’s initial contribution of $20,000, Tefft and Dyer founded the school in 1883, becoming its president and principal, respectively. The school’s founding filled a void in Richmond’s African-American higher education landscape by focusing on women, unlike the all-male Virginia Union University, founded earlier.

In its earliest days, the school “had to make do” for a while, Hylton says, holding its first classes in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Leigh Street.

“This church, founded prior to the Civil War, had already shown its commitment to education,” says Elvatrice Belsches, a historian and educator. “[Ebenezer housed] a Freedmen’s Bureau school for blacks after the Civil War, and one of the first schools created for blacks after the formation of the public school system in Richmond.”

In 1884, the college purchased land that today supports the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School  for Government and International Studies but had previously been part of Bowe Plantation.

The Graduates

For almost 50 years, Hartshorn would churn out graduates who distinguished themselves as pioneers in various careers and industries. In 1892, a trio of Hartshorn women — Mary Moore Booze, Harriet Amanda Miller and Dixie Erma Williams — became the first graduates of a black women’s college to earn bachelor’s degrees in America.

Hartshorn alumna Bessye Jean Banks Bearden was born in New Jersey in 1891. After graduation, “[Bearden] moved to New York City, where she became the first African-American woman on the New York City Board of Education,” Hylton says, adding that Bearden was also a writer, serving as “[the New York] corresponding editor for the Chicago Defender,” and was the mother of internationally acclaimed artist Romare Bearden.

Richmond natives also contributed to Hartshorn’s reputation of excellence.

Tossie Permelia Frances Whiting, a Richmond native, became the first dean of women at what would become Virginia State University, Belsches notes. Also an associate professor of English at the college, Whiting “would serve the school from 1904 to 1948.” A dorm on VSU’s campus is named in her honor.

Hailing from Chesterfield County, Ora Brown Stokes would make history as a Richmond civil rights and social activist, and as the founder of the Home for Working Girls.

“Stokes was active in social service activities that aided black youth and founded organizations that promoted their welfare and those of black women,” Belsches explains. Stokes’ reputation as a force for good didn’t protect her from the discrimination she labored against, however. “In 1917, she would attempt to integrate the new school of social work at the forerunner of the Richmond Professional Institute,” Belsches says, but she was denied admission because of her race.

“[If] our resources permit we plan to enlarge our facilities in such a way as to extend the advantage of the school to the colored people in a practical way,” reads Stokes’ rejection letter from the school’s founder, Dr. Henry H. Hibbs. The note makes clear that the institution was not designed with blacks in mind. “We regret exceedingly that the difficulty of finances and quarters and other difficulties that are always present at the starting of a new enterprise, make this impracticable during our first year.” Hibbs does offer to duplicate the school’s courses not on campus, but “at some place convenient for the colored social workers.”

Another notable Hartshorn graduate was Mary Magdalene Rice Hayes, daughter of Confederate Gen. Robert Jones. “She married Dr. Gregory Hayes and succeeded her husband as president of Lynchburg Seminary [and College] from 1906 to 1908,” Hylton says. Hayes was only the second black woman in American history to preside over a college or university; the first was famed activist, educator and founder of what is today Bethune-Cookman College, Mary McLeod Bethune.

Hartshorn was also distinct because it was an early proponent of student teaching, a program it called “the model classroom” that would go on to shape Virginia Union University’s teacher education department.

What Remains

In 1932, Hartshorn dissolved into nearby Virginia Union University, a behemoth in black education founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society at Lumpkin’s Jail in 1865. The main reason African-American women’s universities like Atlanta’s Spelman College flourished while Hartshorn perished comes down to funding, Hylton says.

Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller and his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller, “invested a lot in Spelman, so they had that backing, and Hartshorn just didn’t,” Hylton says. “Plus, VUU was right next door; it was well-funded and powerful, but it did not welcome women at that time.”

At its founding, Virginia Union’s focus was strictly on educating men, Hylton says, mirroring the exclusionary vision of its first president, Dr. Charles H. Corey.

“[Corey] was somewhat misogynistic,” Hylton says. “He was not a proponent of women in education. He may have seen it detracting from his mission of educating young black men for the ministry, which was his main focus.”

Hartshorn’s integration into Virginia Union University marked a turning point for the school and set a precedent for the education of women nationwide.

“The impact of [Hartshorn can] be found not only locally but nationally,” Belsches says. “Its esteemed place in the pantheon of early HBCUs is cemented by the achievements of its graduates. … Their collective impact in fields as diverse as higher education, social services and social justice, national organizations, and health care speak to a legacy that warrants further illumination.”

Hartshorn now exists only in written historical record and as a physical marker on Virginia Union University’s campus. Though few know its story, Hartshorn Memorial College was a forerunner in principles that elevated and celebrated the rights of women. More than just granting female students a solid education, the school modeled a respect for women and their educational pursuits largely absent elsewhere in the state and country during that period, Hylton says: “Hartshorn was definitely, definitely ahead of its time.”