Description
Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women's college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college "founder" is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution - one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.
Author: Lynn Rainville
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 04/08/2022
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9781800734449
ISBN10: 1800734441
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Archaeology
- History | United States | State & Local | South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,
- Education | Schools | Levels | Higher
About the Author
Lynn Rainville is Director of Institutional History and Professor of Anthropology at Washington and Lee University and former Dean of Sweet Briar College.. For over two decades she has studied the lives of exceptional, yet overlooked, Americans. This work has been supported by numerous grants and she has written five books (on Mesopotamian houses, African American cemeteries, Sweet Briar College, and Virginia's role in World War I). She directs the Tusculum Institute for local history and historic preservation at Sweet Briar College.