Page 8 - Spelman50thReunionBook
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Introduction
by Bettieanne Childers Hart, Michelle Smith, & Merchuria Chase Williams
In September of 1965, a freshman class of The Class of 1969 was diverse in other ways. The
approximately 300 entered Spelman College. Class came from families of modest to
Some were considerable means and 82% of the Class grew up
eager, some in homes with one or both parents and siblings.
were Sixty-nine percent of the class were 2nd or 3rd
apprehensive, generation college educated and 31% of the class
but all were were the 1st in their family to attend college.
excited about Regardless of their origins, the successes of the
the new chapter about to unfold. They were a Civil Rights Movement, newly integrated lunch
melting pot of young women, urban and rural, who counters, hotel and public accommodations,
settled into Morehouse North and South, Packard passage of the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting
and Chadwick Halls, meeting new friends and Rights Acts, and the Supreme Court decision
classmates. Seventy-eight percent of the class regarding access to birth control heralded new
came from southern segregated states; 11% from adventures ahead.
northeastern states; eight-percent from mid- Lyndon Johnson was President of the United
western states; two-percent from western states States and the Vietnam War had not yet escalated
and two were international students from Kenya, to the point that the ranks of our Black male
West Africa. For 35% of the class, Atlanta was counterparts were being noticeably diminished in
their hometown. Seventy-five percent graduated numbers. Our high school years had been
from an all or predominantly Black high school; and traumatized by assassinations—John F. Kennedy,
22% from a predominantly White or ethnically Malcolm X, Medgar Evers—and though we also
mixed high school. Eighty-eight percent lived on witnessed the beginning of the Space Age with the
campus for some or all of their time at Spelman. launch of the first space shuttles, no human had
Forty-four percent received some type of financial yet set foot on the moon. Our fashion sense was
aid during their Spelman years. simple. We all came with one black dress, a white
