Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History. By Stephanie Y. Evans. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. xvi, 275 pp. $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-3031-9.)

Abstract

The years between 1850 (when Lucy Stanton became the first known African American woman to receive a college diploma) and 1954 (the date of the first Brown v. Board of Education ruling) were ones of considerable trial and tribulation for black women in the ivory tower. But, as Stephanie Y. Evans, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, convincingly argues, they were also years of considerable accomplishment. Black women overcame racial, gender, and class obstacles to their inclusion in the academy and, in the process, helped propagate a more democratic view of higher education as a human and civil right. Evans divides her study into two parts: the first is a “qualitative and quantitative map of black women's collegiate history”; the second examines the intellectual legacy of educated black women, as students, faculty, administrators, and citizens (p. 3). Education mattered because it was linked to economic and political progress. Employing the concept of a “standpoint social contract,” Evans contends that black women in the ivory tower actively contributed to “a blueprint for sustainable balance between scholarly rigor, effective pedagogy, and a service imperative” (p. 193).