Black Studies, Wellesley College

Wellesley College was started in 1875 for rich and bright white women who were excluded at the time from elite white men's colleges. It has traditionally been one of the “Seven Sisters” colleges, a kind of Ivy League for women, comprised of Radcliffe, Barnard, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, and Wellesley. Most African American colleges were founded in the same period and for a similar reason, namely, as an alternative for students who were mostly unwelcome at mainstream institutions of higher learning. In the 1970s, some of the Seven Sisters colleges became either completely coeducational or partially coeducational (e.g., in their graduate school only). Wellesley has remained steadfastly committed to its status as an all women's college.

W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1902 College Bred Negro reported two black graduates of Wellesley since its inception. This was enough to qualify Wellesley as a liberal institution at a time when most white schools totally rejected black students. Ella Smith Elbert, class of 1888, was Wellesley's second black graduate and became one of African America's pioneer professional historians when she obtained her master's degree in economics and history from Wellesley in 1892. She taught at Howard University, the legendary “capstone of Negro education,” for 11 years.