#ocjuneteenth

The Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) was founded on groundbreaking values in 1833 when it became the first coeducational institution in the United States. Two years later in 1835, Oberlin cemented its progressive standards when the board of trustees adopted a policy allowing all students to receive an education “irrespective of color.”

George Boyer Vashon (1824-78,), born in Carlisle, PA, was Oberlin College’s first black graduate, receiving the A.B. degree in 1844. After finishing his studies, he returned to Pennsylvania to practice law, but was not allowed to be admitted to the bar because of his skin color. Vashon was admitted to the New York state bar in 1848, becoming New York’s first black lawyer. Vashon also had a notable career in education. He was a language teacher in Haiti, president of Avery College in Pittsburgh, PA, Howard University’s first black professor, and professor of mathematics and ancient and modern languages at Alcorn University.

Mary Jane Patterson (1840-94), was born in Raleigh, NC and later moved to Oberlin, OH with her family. She then attended Oberlin College and became the first black woman to ever receive an A.B. degree in 1862. After leaving Oberlin, Patterson dedicated her life to education. She was the assistant to fellow Oberlin graduate Fanny Jackson Coppin at Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth (now the Cheyney University of Pennsylvania), and then taught at Washington D.C.’s Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (now Dunbar High School). She served as the school’s first black principal, and under her leadership the high school gained enrollment and added a teacher training program. Patterson continued to teach at the high school until her death. She also was very active in other organizations for people of color in D.C., including assisting the elderly, rescue work, and teaching organizations.

Three Trailblazing Oberlin Women

The Oberlin College Class of 1884 produced many talented and remarkable graduates. Included in this class are three black women: Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida Gibbs Hunt, who made their mark on the world in education, women’s rights, and became lifelong colleagues and friends.

Mary Eliza Church Terrell (1863-1954) was born in Memphis, TN and later moved to Oberlin, OH with her family, where she attended high school and then Oberlin College. After her education at Oberlin, she taught at Wilberforce University, and then studied in Europe for two years, becoming fluent in Italian, French, and German. When Terrell returned to the United States, she shifted her focus from her career in education to social activism. She became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women, fought for black women’s suffrage when the National American Women Suffrage Association was more focused on white women, and stood on picket lines to fight for the integration of businesses and schools. The Oberlin College main library is now named for Terrell, and her illustrious career and achievements can be studied at our digital exhibit.

Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt (1862-1957) was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and later moved to Oberlin, OH. Hunt began her career after college as a teacher, but had to leave her position after her marriage in 1920, as married women were not seen as appropriate teachers for young people. She shifted her focus to worldwide peace issues and racial and gender equality. Hunt assisted W.E.B. DuBois organize Pan-African Congresses, and served as the primary French translator of the 1919 Paris Pan-African Congress, and co-chaired the 1923 London Pan-African Congress. She also organized the first black chapter of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and served on the board of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA.

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964) was born into slavery in Raleigh, NC. After completing her studies at Oberlin, Cooper moved to Washington, D.C. and taught Latin at the M Street High School. She left her position there due to her belief that black students should be able to have a classical education, instead of only being offered trade schooling, but later returned. Cooper was a speaker at the World’s Congress of Representative Women in 1893, and spoke at the first Pan-African Congress in 1900. She received a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in 1924 (at the age of 65), which made her only the fourth black woman to hold a doctorate at that time. Cooper then became president of Frelinghuysen University, a school founded in D.C. to provide black students older than public school age access to schooling.

Rapper Kendrick Lamar’s music video for ELEMENT – a single off his album DAMN – features beautiful, often haunting imagery drawn from the work of 20th century photographer Gordon Parks. Check it out below!

Gordon Parks (1912-2006), a self-taught, multi-talented artist, was a prolific author, poet, photographer, musician, composer, and filmmaker. 

We're celebrating Juneteenth with a look at a few* Black women in science and medicine who began their careers at Oberlin.

(Oromeng at GSA 2019 Conference)

Kopo Oromeng’18 (Economics and Geology)

MS in Hydrology, University of Delaware ’20

PhD candidate in Geography & Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware

At Oberlin

: Oberlin gave me a very wholesome undergrad STEM experience. I learned to be the kind of scientist who interrogated social structures, wrote well, and engaged in community service. As a Bonner Scholar, I spent my time at the Oberlin Public Library working at the children’s desk. My position challenged me to make science fun for pre-k and first graders (which requires a lot of free toys and glitter), but I also noticed that many younger children of color at Oberlin struggled with reading and writing. As a double major in Economics, I took classes in Urban and Development economics along with Geology classes.

Advice

The first time I met a black female geologist was at the

National Association of Black Geoscientists. She was an Obie and would later mentor me over a summer research internship at the University of Arizona. Seeing someone who looked like me excel in a STEM field validated my aspirations. My advice to current Oberlin students is to seek out alumni, connect with us, and we’ll meet you wherever you are because we’ve been there too.

We, of course, need more people of color in STEM now more than ever before. We need Black data and artificial intelligence scientists, physicists, marine biologists, mathematicians, and so many more scientists who can design systems that do not exclude people who look like us, and who will contribute to science that challenges the status quo and changes the way we understand the world.

--contributed by Kopo Oromeng at our invitation, with minor editing

Celebrations supporting the rights of blacks have been important to the Oberlin community since its founding.

In January 1849, the Black Laws of 1807 discouraging blacks migration to Ohio were largely repealed. These laws included requiring blacks to have proof that they were indeed free and needed two people to guarantee a surety of $500 that they would maintain good behavior. Dr. Norton S. Townsend, a trustee of Oberlin College was instrumental in assisting in the repeal of these laws. A celebration of songs, some pictured in the program above, was held in February 1849 commemorating the repeals.

In the summer of 1992, the Oberlin community began celebrating the history of its black residents, in conjunction with the existing Oberlin Heritage Days festival, organized by Adenike Sharpley, former artist-in-residence and director of the Dance Diaspora at Oberlin College. In 1995, the festival added the official Juneteenth celebration. Oberlin’s history of abolitionism, its role in the Underground Railroad, and its promise of freedom for all make it a city significant to the Juneteenth holiday.

On June 8, 2004, the Oberlin City Council passed a resolution that Juneteenth be recognized as an official day of commemoration and celebration, and Juneteenth Oberlin was incorporated.

Every year, Juneteenth is celebrated with many events throughout Oberlin. The Emancipation Proclamation is read, artwork is displayed, prayers and picnics are held, educational activities are available for children and families, and remembrances for the enslaved are held at Westwood Cemetery.

Commemorative fan from Juneteenth, 2006

Lee Howard Dobbins Memorials

One recurring event during Oberlin’s Juneteenth celebrations is the remembrance of Lee Howard Dobbins. Dobbins was a four year old black enslaved child following the Underground Railroad to Canada to freedom, when he became so ill that the woman caring for him could not bring him any further. A family in Oberlin took Dobbins in, and he died from consumption only a few days later.

Lee Howard Dobbins’ Tombstone

Let Slavery perish! Lee Howard Dobbins a fugitive slave orphan, brought here by an adopted mother in her flight for liberty, MAR. 17, 1853 left here wasted with consumption. found a refuge in death MAR. 26, 1853. Aged 4 Yrs.

A funeral was held for Dobbins at First Church, where it is said over 1000 people attended. The Oberlin citizens raised funds and erected a tombstone for Dobbins, and he was originally buried in the Professor Street Cemetery. The original tombstone is now held in the Oberlin College Libraries, and a new memorial for Dobbins is now standing at the front of Westwood Cemetery. Remembrances and prayers are held at this memorial for Dobbins and other former slaves during Juneteenth.

First page of article detailing events for the Juneteenth, 2001 celebration

To learn more about the history of Juneteenth, the Emancipation Proclamation, and further Oberlin influences in the history of ending slavery, check out Juneteenth—The “Extinction” of Legalized Slavery in America, a blog post written by Ron Gorman, former Oberlin Heritage Center docent and friend of the Oberlin College Archives, in 2015 for the 150th anniversary.

Program commemorating the 150th anniversary of Westwood Cemetery coinciding with Juneteenth, 2014

You remember works by Willie Cole.

Cole art transforms the shapes of everyday objects.  His two works in the Allen collection use the shape and patterns of irons.  In Proctor Silex (Evidence and Presence) – which fleshed out the Allen's award winning Afterlives of the Black Atlantic – Cole scorches his canvas with patterns evoking slave ships and African masks. The scorched pattern returns in his Man, Spirit, Mask a triptych. 

Proctor Silex (Evidence and Presence)

Willie Cole (1989)

Juneteenth celebration!  The Science Library continues to honor the accomplishments of Oberlin College educated Black medical professionals and scientists past, present and future.

Jé Judson ‘10, PhD candidate in Public Health (Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine), shared her thoughts about our current juncture in time, at the intersection of a pandemic and civil action against police brutality. Thank you, Jé! 

Rowena Jelliffe, a pioneer in the area of interracial theater, president of the Oberlin Women's Suffrage League, and Oberlin College alumna, together with her husband, Russell Jelliffe (also an Oberlin alumnus), founded a settlement house in 1915 that would later become Karamu House in 1941.  Today,  Friday, June 19, 2020, on Juneteenth, the commemoration of the ending of slavery in America, Karamu House—the country’s oldest African American producing theatre—will debut Freedom on Juneteenth, an original theatrical production and artistic response to the recent murders of Black Americans through music, dance, and spoken word.

A Woman to Know: Matilda Arabella Evans, MD.