#TBT Feature
Mary Jane PattersonClick the hyperlinks within this doc to learn more!
“It appears that she is the first colored woman in America to receive a college degree...” —Lucy D. Slowe, 1933
“You are correct in your understanding that Miss Mary Jane Patterson, who received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College in 1862, was the first...” —George Morris Jones, 1933
"Mary Jane Patterson" for Clio: Your Guide to History by
Reid-Maroney, Nina, Louissa Connolly, and Clio Admin.
“Patterson was also a humanitarian and devoted time and money to many organizations. She, Josephine Beall Bruce, Anna Julia Cooper, Charlotte Forten and Mary Church Terrell, founded the Colored Women’s League of Washington, DC in 1894, a predecessor of the National Association of Colored Women.”
—womenhistoryblog.com
“Historian Beverly Washington Jones explains that they recognized they could achieve more with ’many individuals all banded together throughout the whole land with heads and hearts fixed on the same high purpose’...”
—Robin Brooks, 2018
Image 1: Fourth annual report of the Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C., for the year ending January 1, 1897.
Image 2: Mary Church Terrell with a kindergarten class established by the Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C.
“She was a woman with a strong, forceful personality, and showed tremendous power for good in establishing high intellectual standards in the public schools. Thoroughness was one of Miss Patterson’s most striking characteristics as a teacher. She was a quick, alert, vivacious and indefatigable worker.”
Mary Church Terrell, 1917
Mary Jane Patterson by Carol Jacobsen