The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink

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      Student Marion L. Smith (in her memorial speech for Carolyn, titled “The Dean of Women”) described her:

      High aims and high ideals alone were not enough for Miss Shoemaker. One of the significant characteristics to which practically every coed made reference was her willingness to help—no problem brought to her by a coed was too small for her to consider; another characteristic was her desire to be reached easily by the coeds—she tried to be in her office whenever possible, and she was never too busy to see one; another trait was her sympathetic and understanding nature. She realized how important those problems were and what they meant to the girls who brought them, and she sincerely tried to solve those problems. Girls have actually gone into her office weeping and come out smiling.

      Female faculty members in colleges across the United States were asked to serve a dual role as deans of women from the 1890s to the 1930s. The deans were to oversee the women who were the minority population on campus. They would insulate the women from the “maleness” of the campuses and, in turn, protect and guide the women. The deans were scholars who were concerned about the intellectual development of women, especially in competition with men.

      The presence of women on campuses made university presidents and male faculty members uneasy. Women in colleges raised concerns about propriety, delicate matters of health, and female “problems,” as well as the institutional responsibility to families to protect the safety, sexual virtue, and reputations of daughters far from home. For the uncomfortable males, appointing a dean of women to handle all those “unpleasant” female needs was the perfect solution.

      Yet Carolyn helped the less than one hundred females on Purdue’s campus with much more than matters of propriety. When women did not have enough money to finish their degrees, Carolyn gave them financial assistance from her own pocketbook. She also abetted social troubles, “scholastic adjustments,” rooming house supervision, and general overseeing of all coed organizations and activities. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was one of the oldest campus institutions. The YWCA sponsored the Big Sister Movement, by which the women in the upper classes familiarized the freshmen females with activities and customs. In later years, this program at Purdue would be named the “Green Guard.”

      Carolyn became Purdue’s first part-time dean of women the same year Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union (later named the National Woman’s Party) to work toward the passage of a federal amendment to give women the right to vote. Paul, age twenty-eight, “cut her teeth” as a suffragist in England. While there, she met Burns in London.

      On March 3, 1913, one day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Paul and Burns organized a strategically timed, majestically staged women’s suffrage parade with more than 5,000 marchers striding down Pennsylvania Avenue. Stunning and confident, Inez Milholland, a lawyer, led the parade. Draped in a cream cape that billowed in the breeze, she rode astride a snow-white horse. Holding a place of honor, immediately following, were women from seventeen countries that had already enfranchised women. Then came the “Pioneers,” women who had been struggling in the American suffrage movement for sixty-five years to secure the right to vote.

      The next section of the parade celebrated workingwomen, grouped by occupation and wearing the appropriate garb. There were nine bands, twenty-four floats, and a section for male supporters. The marchers waved American flags and bore signs and sashes in suffrage colors of purple, white, and gold that bore the words “Votes for Women.” About 500,000 spectators gathered along the route.

      Everyone was welcome to participate, with one exception. In a city that was southern in both location and attitude, where the Christmas Eve rape of a government clerk by a black man had percolated racist sentiments, Paul was convinced that some white women would not march with black women. In response to several inquiries, she had quietly discouraged blacks from participating.

      Aware they were not wanted and in spite of fear that they may be attacked, a new Howard University African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, joined the procession. African American activists believed that if white women needed the vote to secure their rights, black women needed it even more. They faced discrimination on two levels—sex and race. The parade was the group’s first public act. Today, Delta Sigma Theta is one of the largest African American women’s organizations in the country, with an estimated 300,000 members around the world and a chapter at Purdue University.

      Meanwhile, panicky reports came from white suffragists in Chicago that Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist and suffragist who led an antilynching campaign, planned to join the procession. When the Illinois unit assembled in the parade line, leaders of the group instructed Wells-Barnett to walk with an all-black group rather than under the flag of her home state. With tears in her eyes, Wells-Barnett refused to participate in the procession unless “I can march under the Illinois banner.”

      Wells-Barnett stood from the sidelines watching the cavalcade until she decided to solve the issue herself by defiantly walking, mid-parade, from the sidelines into the Illinois group, matching their stride and ignoring their stares. Wells-Barnett once said, “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

      Few would notice Wells-Barnett’s bold move for the parade was about to turn to mayhem. Some of the onlookers, mostly men in town for the presidential inauguration, jeered, “Go back home where you belong.” Men surged into the street, making it difficult for the parade to pass. They snatched banners, grabbed at clothing, and tried to climb onto floats. Women were tripped, grabbed, shoved, spat upon, and many heard “indecent epithets” and “barnyard conversation.” The men marching in the parade were met with degrading remarks, such as, “Where are your skirts?”

      Rather than protecting the marchers, some of the police were amused by the sneers and laughter and joined in. A mass of humanity filled the streets, wearing bowlers and wide-brimmed hats, bundled in coats and gloves. While many policemen turned a blind eye to the marchers’ degrading and frightening circumstances, the unexpected heroes of the march were 1,500 Boy Scouts of America.

      The Boy Scouts had been invited to the parade in full uniform—knickers, boots, hats, and staves—as volunteers to help with law enforcement. Their organization had been founded just three years earlier. Little did the Boy Scouts know when they agreed to assist the police, they would have to actually defend marchers from police inaction. The boys attempted to hold back the crowds and assisted the two ambulances that traveled to and from the hospital for six hours shuttling the one hundred injured. Eventually, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson authorized the use of a troop of cavalry from nearby Fort Myer to help control the crowd.

      Boys’ Life magazine featured a four-page article about the Scouts’ deeds in its April 1913 issue. The magazine reported that while the police initially told the Boy Scouts to stay behind their lines, the crowd soon overwhelmed law enforcement. Police were begging scouts for help and borrowing their staves. As a young organization, the Boy Scouts of America relished the good press. The Boys’ Life article concluded, “Washington and its respectable visitors will not soon forget the spectacle of boys in the uniform that stands for learning the principles of good citizenship actually restraining grown men from acting the part of brutes.”

      Even with the numerous difficulties, many marchers completed the parade route, which ended at the Treasury Building.

      The mistreatment of the marchers by both the crowd and the police led to Senate subcommittee hearings with more than 150 witnesses recounting their experiences. The superintendent of police for the District of Columbia lost his job. The committee heard multiple mentions of the heroic Boy Scouts.

      Despite the anger and violence, the suffragists considered the march a success, for it was the СКАЧАТЬ