150 Years of Making History

In September 1875, Wellesley College welcomed its first incoming class. More than 300 students showed up, along with mountains of luggage—and concerned family members. For a young woman to go off to college at the time was a break with the past. Imagine the courage they must have possessed!

While much has changed in the last 150 years, the spirit and determination of our students and alumnae remain, as do our founding principles.

Founders Henry and Pauline Durant saw that educated women—of all economic backgrounds—could become active participants in strengthening the country’s democracy and addressing social challenges. And because they believed that women’s intellects were equal to men’s and that women’s concerns should take precedence here, they decided Wellesley students, unlike their peers at other women’s colleges, would be taught and led by women.

Now, during this anniversary year, we recognize the ways Wellesley women have changed the course of history—and how they have transformed the College itself. I want to celebrate just a few of those stories here.

Wellesley alumnae have always sought to serve something larger than themselves—on campus and far beyond. We see this early on in two physicians: Dr. Mabel Seagrave, class of 1905, and Dr. Harriet Rice, class of 1887, the first Black woman to graduate from Wellesley. Both helped save lives during World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. Their heroism, along with that of many other Wellesley alumnae and faculty volunteers, would help tip the balance for women’s suffrage in 1920.

In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights era, Black first-years arrived on campus to find themselves paired with other Black students as roommates or in single rooms, to “avoid conflict.” Five of these students organized in response and founded Ethos, Wellesley’s Black student organization. Thanks in part to their efforts, the College struck race and racial preference questions from its housing forms; recruited more Black students; created a major field of study of Afro-American history (now called Africana studies); and established Harambee House as a home to organizations dedicated to students of African descent.

In the 1970s, Wellesley President Barbara Newell understood that the feminist movement required the kind of intellectual heft that could only be achieved through research. In 1974, the College founded the Center for Research on Women, now the Wellesley Centers for Women, which has generated extraordinary interdisciplinary research and action on an enormous range of issues critical to women.

Today, Wellesley stands firm in our commitment to women everywhere. One example is the founding of the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh, which provides a liberal arts education and develops leaders in a region that offers few opportunities to less well-off women. Wellesley President Emerita Diana Chapman Walsh ’66 convened the meeting on the Wellesley campus where the university was conceived. And today, we send our own alumnae there as teaching fellows.

These examples, and countless others, are part of Wellesley’s legacy, one defined by indomitable women who have used their education—and educated others—to make history.

With the help of our alumnae, the most powerful women’s network in the world, Wellesley will continue to prepare, inspire, and open doors for the generations that follow, ready to take on the next century and a half of challenges.

As an institution and a community, Wellesley College will always be making history.