While America is gearing up for a star-spangled banner year in 2026 to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday – the Semiquincentennial – let’s not overlook the 100-year anniversary observance of the creation of the “Seven Sisters” consortium of women’s liberal arts colleges.
Credit
Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken (shown below), president of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,
for drawing attention to “the difficulties that women’s schools were having in
raising endowment money sufficient for the desired caliber of education for
young women in the early 20th century.”
In
1915, Dr. MacCracken hosted a gathering of the leadership from three other women’s
colleges, all located in Massachusetts – Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, Smith in
Northampton and Wellesley in Wellesley. They agreed to form an alliance to advocate
that “women’s education be put on an equal footing with opportunities available
to men.”
It’s important to remember that women did not possess the right to vote in the United States at this time. (The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Women’s Right to Vote” was ratified on Aug.18, 1920.)
By 1926, three other women’s educational institutions agreed to join the consortium: Barnard in New York City; Bryn Mawr (Pa.); and Radcliffe in Cambridge, Mass. Hence, an association was formalized.
Someone came up with the bright idea of naming the seven-college group as “The Seven Sisters,” in reference to Greek mythology.
Collectively,
the seven sisters are known as the Pleiades, daughters of Pleione and Atlas.
Orion, the mighty hunter, romantically pursued the young women, but Zeus, king
of all the Olympian gods, helped them escape by changing them into doves. They
flew into the sky and became a cluster of stars within the constellation
Taurus, the bull. To the southeast is Orion, still chasing them.
The women’s colleges that became The Seven Sisters confederation, were viewed as “female counterparts to the male Ivy-league colleges,” but Dr. MacCracken revealed the economic disparities in 1926.
The top men’s schools had a combined endowment of $319 million, while The Seven Sisters’ endowments totaled only $36 million. A coordinated fundraising plan was launched to remedy the situation.
Six of the original schools continue to meet for an annual conference to exchange information and ideas.
Radcliffe no longer exists as an independent entity. It was founded as “the Harvard Annex” in 1879. When the women’s annex was chartered as a full college in 1894, it was given the name of Harvard’s first female benefactor, Lady Anne Radcliffe Moulson. Radcliffe was fully absorbed within Harvard in 1999. (The photo below is from the Radcliffe archives.)
Vassar
became coeducational in 1969, but continues to work together with Barnard, Bryn
Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley as the six colleges take turns hosting
the annual conference. (Vassar photos are shown below,)
The
eldest “Sister” is Mount Holyoke, founded in 1837 by schoolteacher Mary Mason
Lyon, who grew up on a farm near Buckland, Mass.
The college, located in the Connecticut River Valley, offers a view of Mount Holyoke, the highest peak in the Holyoke Range, with an elevation of 935 feet. (The territory was first surveyed by colonist Elizur Holyoke, who had settled in Springfield, Mass.)
Lyon served as Mount Holyoke’s president for 12 years. Her vision “fused intellectual challenge and moral purpose.” An early pupil in 1847 was Emily Dickinson.
The
youngest “Sister” is Barnard, formed in 1889 “as a response to Columbia College’s
refusal to admit women. Barnard is named after Frederick Augustus Porter
Barnard, a deaf American educator and mathematician who served as Columbia’s
president for 25 years.
“He
advocated for coeducational settings and first proposed in 1879 that Columbia
admit women. Columbia’s Board of Trustees repeatedly rejected Barnard’s
suggestion, however.”
(Wellesley College photos are shown below.)
(And, finally, a photo from Smith College is shown below.)
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