Va-Hist:

This book review currently circulating on H-Net's lists may be of interest.

Please respect the letter and spirit of the copyright notice at the end of
the review.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]

Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us


-----Original Message-----
From: Jean A. Stuntz, Ph. D. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 23 January, 2002 7:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: REV: McDaid on McCandless, _The Past in the Present_


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (January, 2002)

Amy Thompson McCandless. _The Past in the Present: Women's
Higher Education in the Twentieth-Century American South_.
Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1999. x +
389 pp.  Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $49.95
(cloth), ISBN 0-8173-0945-4; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8173-0994-2.

Reviewed for H-SAWH by Jennifer Davis McDaid, [log in to unmask],
Archives Research Services Department, Library of Virginia

Well-Read and Well-Mannered

"My oldest girl took to education like a duck takes to water,"
James Perdue explained to an interviewer for the Virginia
Writers' Project in 1939.  After finishing high school, Miss
Perdue attended Radford State Teachers College and found work in
a Franklin County, Virginia, school.  Her sister was "likely to
go to teachin' too," James Perdue explained, since "it's as good
as anyone'd want his daughter to do."  While he approved of
women working as teachers, Perdue frowned on the new fashions he
saw in nearby Roanoke, including high-heeled sandals, red
lipstick, and pants.  "Of course they're callin' them new
names--slacks, I think it is--an' they come in fancy colors," he
sighed, "but they ain't nothin' but pants."  Like most
Southerners, Perdue thought women would benefit from an
education, but he firmly believed that only certain professions
(and certain behaviors) were appropriate.  Women might be
well-read, but they should also be well-mannered.[1]

In _The Past in the Present_, Amy Thompson McCandless has
written the first comprehensive history of women's higher
education in the twentieth-century South.  Using a rich array
of school catalogs, oral histories, and other contemporary
sources mined from college archives across the region, she
deftly describes the experiences of black and white women,
and examines how the educational experiences of Southern
women in public and private institutions differed from the
experiences of their sisters nationwide.  Southern students,
according to McCandless, have been more Protestant,
more rural, more conservative, and less affluent than students
in other regions.  Economic, social, political, and cultural
forces at work in the South combined to shape a distinctive
academic atmosphere for women.  Certain types of
institutions--such as all-black colleges, public women's colleges,
and separate agricultural colleges--were more prevalent in the
South than in the rest of the country.  Campus life at Southern
colleges was markedly different, in McCandless's view,
because Southern life was different.

McCandless begins by describing the status of Southern women's
education at the turn of the century, when an agrarian economy
and traditional views of gender, class, and race set Southern
education apart.  Southern women had limited scholastic
opportunities in comparison to those enjoyed by female students
in other parts of the country (and, of course, in comparison to
those available to Southern men).  By 1900, seventy-one percent
of the nation's colleges--but only six Southern state
universities--were coeducational. Resistance to coeducation and
coordinate education was fierce in the South.  McCandless traces
Mary-Cooke Branch Munford's lengthy--and ultimately
unsuccessful--fight to create a coordinate college for women at
the University of Virginia early in the century.  Opponents saw
no difference between women on a nearby campus (sharing the
University's library and teaching staff) and women on the
campus, and they firmly believed that female students would
distract men from their studies, lower academic standards, and
sully college traditions.  As a result, Virginia's General
Assembly defeated a bill proposing a coordinate college in
Charlottesville every biennium from 1910 to 1920.  (For a time,
Virginia was the only Southern state without a publicly
supported liberal arts college for women.)

Advocates of equal education in the South did enjoy some
victories.  The College of William and Mary in Virginia became
coeducational in 1918 (but charged women higher tuition fees),
and the University of Virginia opened its graduate and
professional programs to female students in 1920.  The stubborn
Southern opposition to coeducation still lingers, McCandless
argues, as evidenced in the controversial attempts to admit
women to the Citadel in South Carolina and Virginia Military
Institute.  Both finally submitted to court-mandated
coeducation, the Citadel in 1996 and VMI in 1997.

McCandless describes the distinctive "'twoness' of Southern
character, place, and time" that shaped the course of women's
higher education in the twentieth century (p. 17).  Southern
women were "simultaneously American and Southern, Southern and
female, female and black/white, and black/white and
upper/middle/lower class" (p. 281).  Those with the means to pay
tuition could pursue higher education, as long as they adhered
to the ideal of the genteel Southern lady.  Rules at black and white
colleges emphasized manners and deportment, requiring students to attend

chapel, dress properly, and shun any appearance of impropriety.
Parents, administrators, and teachers of female students viewed
decorum and obedience as more important than independence and
scholarly achievement.

While Southern institutions strictly monitored behavior, they
only slowly revised the classical curriculum and raised
graduation standards.  Textbooks failed to include references to
women and their accomplishments, and professors North and South
often taught political science courses with little regard for
the Nineteenth Amendment.  "Women have had the suffrage for ten
years," the president of Connecticut College wrote in 1930, "but
I do not believe that the colleges as a whole have quite grasped
that fact" (p. 77).  Preserving traditional views of sex and
race, McCandless points out, was "vital to preserving the
twentieth-century hegemony of the white, upper-class man" (p.
156).  As late as 1964, women at Auburn University in Alabama
received a list of "What to Wear When"--dresses or skirts for
class, with gloves for football games and heels for Sunday
dinner.  Women could not wear blue jeans or chew gum in public;
during campus demonstrations, female students were expected to
retreat to their dormitories and close the blinds.  Not all
students dutifully followed this "prescribed path to ladyhood,"
and some openly challenged the social restrictions imposed by
administrators (p. 148).  In 1934, the freshman class at Hollins
College in Virginia successfully petitioned the dean of students
for permission to wear bobby socks (instead of stockings) to
class; other students fought for the right to smoke, drink, and
date.

Although the traditional views preserved in Southern colleges
cast women in a supporting role in society, they also helped to
forge a sense of sisterhood and security.  These unique
circumstances prepared women to work together in clubs and
organizations, where they worked effectively to change society
and challenge the status quo.  Ultimately, paternalism fostered
social consciousness and community activism among women.

While the educational opportunities available to women were
limited on the basis of gender, they were further limited on the
basis of race and class.  Administrators and legislators who
opposed coeducation also objected to integration, as did the
majority of white students at institutions in the Deep South.
Black women overcame daunting economic, political, and social
obstacles to acquire a higher education.  Throughout her book,
McCandless interweaves their story with that of their white
counterparts, constructing a thoughtful, comprehensive narrative.

_The Past in the Present_ makes a significant contribution to
the complex history of women in the twentieth-century South.
McCandless's informative survey places women in a broad context,
but also provides intimate portraits of their experiences,
largely through striking oral histories that give voice to their
struggles and accomplishments.  Bolstered by primary source
research, interviews, and a survey of college Web sites, Amy
Thompson McCandless has written a much-needed study of women's
educational opportunities and the challenges that accompanied
them.

Note

[1].  James Perdue interview (1939), "WPA Life Histories,
Virginia Writers' Project," Library of Virginia.

    Copyright 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
    redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
    educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
    author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
    H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
    contact the Reviews editorial staff: [log in to unmask]

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html