Not Always Black and White

Vassar’s history is not impervious to the shameful stains of a blatantly racist time.

Meet Anita Florence Hemmings, Vassar’s first Black graduate, and descendant of Thomas Jefferson.

Entering Vassar in 1893, Hemmings proved herself an excellent, well-rounded student: Classes in Latin, French and Greek, and soprano extraordinaire in the glee club and other musical ensembles, Hemmings was not much different form your typical good-looking, overachieving Vassar student today – save her jumbo-sized sleeves.

But just days shy of graduation, Hemmings’ roommate voiced concerns that Hemmings might not be quite white enough, sparking an investigation that uncovered what wracked the Higher Education headlines with a pearl-clutching scandal. While a Boston newspaper noted that “the strength of her strain of white blood has so asserted itself that she could pass anywhere simply as a pronounced brunette of white race,” this didn’t protect her from the ssearing scandal. And though she was eventually awarded her diploma, heartbroken by the strife, Hemmings retreated into obscurity.

But Hemmings would would not go gently into the night, not as a victim of a cruel and unjust time – she would marry an almost-white man, become Anita Hemmings Love, and (go to questionable lengths to) raise her children as white. And some 25 years later – her ovaries of steel still raging against the injustice – she would send her daughter, Ellen Love, off to Vassar…as white!

While the college’s administration discovered Ellen Love’s genealogy, it protected this information, for reasons unclear, and in 1927, Love graduated – much to the chagrin of Hemmings’ old roommate who was still nursing the heartache that Hemmings “proved to be a Negress.”