Martha Carey Thomas
Martha Carey Thomas (born January 2, 1857 in Baltimore , Maryland , † December 2, 1935 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was an American educator, suffragist and linguist . She was the second president of Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
life and work
Carey Thomas was the eldest daughter of Doctor James Carey Thomas and Mary Whitall Thomas, a Quaker family . Suffragette Hannah Whitall Smith was her mother's sister. Carey Thomas attended Quaker schools in her hometown of Baltimore and in 1872 enrolled at the Howland Institute, a Quaker boarding school for girls near Ithaca, New York. She then prevailed over her father's objections and began college education. From 1875 to 1877 she studied at Cornell University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She turned down the university's offered position as professor of literature and dean at Sage College. Instead, she studied at Johns Hopkins University from 1877 to 1978 , but since she was not allowed to attend all lectures as a woman, she traveled to Europe with Mamie Gwinn. With Mary Mackall Gwinn , Mary Garrett , Julia Rebecca Rogers and her cousin Elizabeth (Bessie) Tabor King, she had founded a philosophical and literary debating club "Friday Night", which met every two weeks. At least partially stimulated by these discussions and supported by her mother, Thomas decided to pursue an advanced degree at a German university. With Mamie Gwinn as a travel companion and roommate, she enrolled in a degree in philology at the University of Leipzig and studied there for three years. Shortly before her graduation, the University of Leipzig banned university degrees for women, so that she did her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Zurich in 1882 with distinction . She was the first foreigner and the first woman to receive this degree in Zurich . She then spent some time in Paris , where she participated in Gaston Paris conferences at the Sorbonne .
President of Bryn Mawr College
Carey Thomas returned to the United States in 1883 and was appointed Professor of English in 1884 and Dean of the Bryn Mawr College for Women, which was founded in 1885. She was the first female faculty member in the country to hold the title of dean. At Bryn Mawr College, she organized the undergraduate degree program and started the first graduate program at a women's college. In the same year that Bryn Mawr College was enrolling its first grades, Carey Thomas started a girls' prep school in Baltimore in collaboration with other members of the former Friday Night . The Bryn Mawr School stood out for its high standards and required passing the Bryn Mawr College entrance exams to graduate. Shortly after the Bryn Mawr School opened, the founders (with the exception of Julia Rogers) embarked on a far-sighted new project to expand educational and career opportunities for women. With the help of a national system of women's committees they organized, this group raised funds to equip a medical school at Johns Hopkins University. Mary Elizabeth Garrett had inherited a fortune from her father, who was president of the first great American railroad, and the group relied heavily on the financial and administrative contributions of Mary Garrett. As a condition of the gift, the Women's Committee requested that women should be admitted to medical school on the same terms as men and that college degrees should be required for admission. The group also established scholarships for European students to study at Bryn Mawr College, the first such graduate scholarship in the United States. In 1894 Carey Thomas was selected to succeed resigning President James Evans Rhoads as President of Bryn Mawr College. Under her direction, dormitories, a library and various outbuildings were built in a Collegiate Gothic style, which was first used in this country on the Bryn Mawr campus. Thomas introduced an experimental model school to complement the education department, established a graduate social research department, and helped set up a summer school for female industrial workers on the Bryn Mawr campus. Prior to becoming president of the quorum, Thomas was instrumental in building student self-government, and as president she promoted their growth and defended their prerogatives.
When Carey Thomas moved to Bryn Mawr, she was assigned one of three cottages that were made available for faculty accommodation. Nicknamed the Dean's Office, it was supposed to be her residence until she removed her personal effects in 1933. For nearly twenty years she shared the dean's office with Mamie Gwinn, who was first a doctoral student and then a professor of literature at the college.
Carey Thomas was against marriage, which she viewed as "loss of freedom, impoverishment and personal submission for which I see absolutely no compensation". As a homosexual, she had a relationship with her long-time friend Mamie Gwinn for several years. After Gwinn's marriage in 1904, Mary E. Garrett moved to Bryn Mawr and lived in the deanery until her death in 1915. Carey Thomas shared a deeper interest in women's suffrage with Garrett, and both women were instrumental in founding the College Equal Suffrage League. In 1908 Carey Thomas was the first president of the National College Women's Equal Suffrage League and later a senior member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Thomas' other interest groups included the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (later renamed the American Association of University Women), the Naples Table Association (which supported women scholars at the Naples Research Station), the College Entrance Examination Board, the International Federation of University Women, the Athens Hostel (for use by women scholars at the American School for Classical Research in Athens) and the Peace Movement. Carey Thomas retired in 1922. As President Emeritus, she remained on the Board of Directors of Bryn Mawr College until her death. The fortune left by Mary Garrett enabled her to travel to France, India and the Sahara, among others.
Critical consideration
As the college president, Thomas played an important role in achieving equality for women. After 1920, she campaigned for the politics of the National Woman's Party and advocated a change to the US Constitution on equality at an early stage. Her book "Education of Women" was published in 1900 by the US Department of Education. For a time she directed the National College Women's Equal Suffrage League and Bryn Mawr College served as a hub for the suffrage movement under her leadership. She brought prominent women's rights activists to the campus to give lectures, including Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt . Like some other suffragists, she focused on expanding rights for white, privileged women. She was reluctant to accept black female students at Bryn Mawr and also refused to hire Jewish faculty members. Her views were illuminated in 1994 in the biography of Smith College Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz: The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. In a correspondence, Carey Thomas pointed out that black students at Bryn Mawr College may not be comfortable. In 1906 she wrote in a letter: “Since I believe that much of the benefit of a college education comes from close association with other students of the same age who are interested in the same intellectual activities, I should be inclined to advise such a student to apply for admission to a college in any of the New England states where, due to the diverse makeup of the student body, they would not be so easily deprived of that intellectual camaraderie. At Bryn Mawr College we have a large number of students from the central and southern states, these conditions would be much less favorable here. ”In several letters Carey Thomas made anti-Semitic remarks, including a comment on her desire to have a faculty that was distinctive "Our own good Anglo-Saxon stock". Carey Thomas claimed that African American students did not apply to Bryn Mawr during their tenure as president, but she redirected Jessie Redmon Fauset, an African American student who received a Bryn Mawr scholarship in 1901, to Cornell University and helped out some of her teaching to pay.
In 2017, a working group of faculties, students, staff, trustees and alumni was formed to study the institutional history of marginalization and resistance, and President Cassidy announced that a temporary moratorium on the use of the Thomas name on buildings and spaces on the Campus was imposed.
Publications (selection)
- The Making of a Feminist: Early Journals and Letters of M. Carey Thomas, Kent State University Press, 1979
- The College: Paper Read Before the International Congress of Arts and Science, Department 23 (the College), Section 3, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mon., September 19-24, 1904
- The New Pedagogy, Verlag Kessinger Publishing, 2010, ISBN 9781167147401
literature
- Horowitz, Helen: The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-252-06811-4 .
- Horowitz, Helen: The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0252068119 .
Web links
- Bryn Mawr confronts racist views of former leader, Posted: August 24, 2017
- Biography at Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections
- Message from President Cassidy: Grappling with Bryn Mawr's Histories
- Martha Carey Thomas at Encyclopaedia Britannica
- How Should We Remember M. Carey Thomas?
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thomas, Martha Carey |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American educator, suffragist, and linguist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 2, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Baltimore , Maryland |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 2, 1935 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia , Pennsylvania |