June 18, 2021 • 25 mins
Yves joins us to go over the history of Lucy Diggs Slowe and her many firsts in the worlds of education and tennis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
I've never told you protection of Hiar Radio. It's time
for another female first, which means we are once again
so happy to be joined to have joining us, to
(00:25):
be joined by our good friend and co worker Eve's hives.
Hi Hi. Was that stumble over that based on the
fact that you said that in passive voice or was
that just like a way that you must say it.
It's interesting you say that because in high school I
had a very very intense grammar teacher and she was
(00:49):
like well known throughout the school for making people cry.
She was really strict, and she hated the passive voice.
And so when I catch myself writing in it or
do it, even if I think sometimes it's not as
big a deal as she made it out to be,
or that it fits the situation, I hear Mrs Ham's
voice in the back of my head. So it is
(01:12):
a thing where clearly I still get hug up on it.
I didn't mean to call you out on that. It's
just it was just that something that I noticed, you know,
as a person who was an editor and you know,
thinks about grammar because it's one of those things that
never really mattered, like at all of what it does
actually make something a little bit more difficult to understand.
But like there are so many things that may matter
(01:34):
on the page that shouldn't be staunch rules when we're
just like speaking. So I just related, Yeah, well, thank
you picked up on it. I think about it every
day because the part of this job is communicating and writing,
and I'm always like, how can I write this and
not the passive voice, which actually relates to kind of
(01:55):
what I was going to ask before we get into this,
because we've been talking about sororities and fraternity these and
all of this relates to the topic to the woman
we're going to discuss today. But I was curious how
both of you your college experiences were, how you kind
of remember them. You don't have to go in depth,
but you know, kind of on the surface, how was
it for you. I wanted Samantha to go first. Oh, man,
(02:18):
I was first. I try to see because mine's boring.
Like I'm super religious in college, so I did a
lot of like religious things, including mission trips. And I
really regret, not regret the people that I've met, because
I feel like I've met some really cool people. But
if I had to do it over again, I would
(02:39):
have made a few more mistakes. I feel like I've
missed out on a lot of that. I did tell
my niece, who just recently graduated college, when she started,
I was like, enjoy it, truly, enjoy it, do what
you want, and don't be afraid to do some mischievous
not illegal necessarily, but mischievous things, and make good friend shows.
(03:02):
But yeah, I was really boring, not bad. Like we
were talking some of the things that I had some
flashbacks and going to Tate Center at the University of Georgia,
which is where all the kids hung out, or any
of the organizations that try to recruit you, or even
our college campus preachers who would just scream at people.
That was where they hung out. So that's what I
remember when we were talking about all of that, And
of course we were talking about sororities and trying to
(03:24):
be recruited. That's where they hung out majority of the time.
But yeah, very very boring essentially. Yeah, that didn't sound
boring to me at all. I mean, I just I
let me think college was good. I don't know, I
feel like it was a lot different than my high
school experience was coming out of high school obviously, as
(03:46):
it is for like many people, but I was like,
I was a nerd, and I've been a nerd and
I'm still a nerd. So I was still that throughout college.
But I did have a lot of fun, like you know,
I spent I was in Atlanta for most of my time,
I was in Savana for some of my time, and
in France for a very short time. But yeah, I
had a great time. I feel like I had a
(04:08):
good school work life balance. Surprisingly, like I was able
to still have new experiences with my friends and meet
new people and party and did make a lot of mistakes,
so that one Samantha Um, But I enjoyed it. You know,
(04:32):
I wouldn't do anything differently. I I feel like the
reason I chose Georgia Tech was a very foolish reason.
It was mostly monetary. But the second thing was I
thought I was in Atlanta so I had party a lot.
That's not the case. I definitely party more now than
I did. So I really enjoyed college because I also
have a nerd and I love like reading and I
(04:53):
love challenging points of view or just new ways of
thinking that I owner there those like terrifying liberal new
thoughts that you have, but I hated homework and I
still hate homework, and so it was like, if I
could just go to the class and have the Dorom experience,
that was amazing. The homework experience was a nightmare. Yeah,
(05:17):
And I also in high school, I didn't have to study.
In college, it was like, oh wow, here's a scene
for sure. But yeah, I had some fun times. And
I actually started running for the first time again in
over a year, which means I had to. I brought
out my old playlist, my old exercise playlist, and so
(05:40):
many of the songs on there, or like songs I
loved in college. I'd be walking on Skyles walk Away
and this song would be playing, and it just brought
back a lot of a lot of those memories. Yeah. Yeah,
I love those songs that you can pinpoint moments in
time that they're related to and they become kind of
like the medic songs in your life. But it's funny
because I was the opposite of you, Annie. I don't know,
(06:03):
in college, I wasn't really yeah, but I was the
opposite of you in terms of homework. I have a
literal VHS tape of me when I was a child
in elementary school saying that I loved homework, Like when
I don't. I don't remember what I was being interview for.
I think I was in like some sort of play
and somebody asked me, like, Eaves, what do you like
(06:23):
or what do you like to do? And I was like,
homework so cute? Yeah, so I can't really bear loves homework.
I loved homework intill college. Oh no, I loved it
elementary school and middle school. I hated it in high school.
And but yes I would ask for extra mass sheets
(06:47):
because I loved doing all the calculation. I see. So
it it morphed, It transforms somehow somewhere along the way.
It did. It did when the professors were like, read
this three books tonight, and your whole score, your whole
g p A depends on the outcome of this one test.
(07:09):
That was not good for me, as I had a
nightmares about commas, mainly because later in the like AP
English and all of that, they're like, each common mistake
is thirty points and I'm like what what? And I
failed because of my one and a half common mistakes.
I still have nightmares about that. I think Commas, I
think we should relax about Comma. That's the quotable from
(07:33):
this episode. I think we still like about that. That
is a true belief that I hold. This all relates
to the person that we're talking about today, perhaps tangentially,
(07:57):
but it does. So who did you bring for us
to discuss today's Yeah, we have Lucy Dig's slow. So
she had a lot of first Like she was a
pioneer in many ways, and she is related to what
we were just talking about because she was in the
education field in school, she was a teacher, and she
cared a lot about the education and development of girls
(08:20):
and of black girls and women specifically. So she has
a lot of accomplishments, Like we could go down the
list of all of the organizations and the civil and
community and educational ventures, various ventures that she was involved in.
But as far as first, she was the first Dean
of Women at Howard University, and so the Dean of
(08:42):
Women was kind of this role where it was like
student affairs for women, like counseling, discipline, and student experiences
for the women's students at the school. Um. She was
also the first president of the National Association of College Women,
and she was one of the founders of the Alpha
Kappa Alpha sorority. So she is a big name in
(09:02):
the early nineteen hundreds and she did a lot in
terms of pioneering when it came to education for girls
and women and black women specifically in the US. Yes,
also tennis player. Also tennis player. How can I forget that? Yes,
that is also one of our first that we'll get to.
(09:24):
Tennis player. I've played tennis for a few years in
high school to speaking of, um, was not great at it.
It was one of those things where my dad was like,
he was really into tennis and he wanted me to
really be into tennis. And I actually really enjoyed it,
but I was also very bad. It is a fun sport.
I've actually been wanting to play it again in recent
(09:46):
years because it's it's a pretty accessible to Like, no,
it doesn't cost that much to have a rack in
their tennis course in a lot of places. Yeah. Yeah,
So I really suck at tennis. I tried because my
all of my friends played, all of them played, and
I hope not great at sports outside of like give
me something to throw. Sure, but I remember a dude
(10:07):
who was flirting with me high to teach me I
was so bad he dropped his racket and walked off
within the first ten minutes. So I was like co
co cool. So I never learned it's no good. That
guy's no good. I've seen you play some Mario perty
tennis with decent amount of success. Yes, give me a week.
(10:29):
I still have to have some wrist action. There some
similar motor skills happening. Maybe it's the aim where it
just goes out of the tennis court with like the
tall chain like fans. It doesn't matter how tall it is,
I'll still get it out of there. So you're the
person who makes the person have to leave the court
every time. Who's not wrong for quinnin walking away? And
(10:53):
there's nothing wrong with what he did. It was an
absolute correct reaction. Yeah, So me and my friends used
to in high school. We would go at night at
like nine pm and there'd be no one there and
we play what we called for court tennis, and it
was some of the best exercise I've ever got in
my life because basically, the ball, as long as it
was bouncing, it was still employee. No matter where it was.
It was so fun. That sounds tiring, but yeah, you
(11:16):
gotta because you would hit it on like the ford court,
the opposite court. The other person's gotta run over there.
It was awesome anyway, all right, our tennis stories aside.
Shall we get into the story here, Yeah, let's do it.
So Lucy Dick Flow she was born July fourth, and
there's some discrepancy over the day whether that was eight
(11:37):
three or eighteen eighty five, but she was born in
Virginia and she was the youngest of seven children. Her
parents were Henry and Fanny Slow. They died when she
was pretty young, so she went to live with an
aunt in Lexington, Virginia. And in an autobiographical story, like
a semi autobiographical story of hers, she said that she
(11:58):
was going to live with her aunt, who quote didn't
believe in playing in the mud or with boys or
running up and down the road was more than I
could bear. So there was a lot of talk of
how her aunt was big on education and discipline, and
you can kind of tell that in her story as well,
because years later she moved to Baltimore with her family.
(12:22):
Apparently her aunt wanted them to go there so that
she would have a better education, so schools were segregated
at the time. She went to Baltimore High School and
she was pretty competitive in school. She graduated as salutatorian
and she decided that she wanted to go to college.
So using money that she got from scholarships and that
(12:44):
she got from jobs that she worked, she was able
to attend Howard University, which is an HBCU in d
C that was established back in sixty seven. She was
the first girl from Baltimore High to go to Howard
in the first to get a scholarship. And she was
super involved in things while she was at the university,
Like this is another place where you can go down
the list of things. She was involved in sports and
(13:07):
in student organizations, and it was here where she was
a founding member of a KA, which was the first
national Greek sorority for black women, which we talked about
a little bit talk um and the tennis comes in
here too because she was also president of the women's
tennis club. And she graduated from Howard in nineteen o eight.
(13:28):
So after graduating, she went back to Baltimore and she
taught English at Baltimore High School and she began teaching
at a time when public school officials were really hiring
black people to teach black students. And she once wrote
that she what she chose teaching the profession because she
was happier in that profession than she was in any
(13:49):
other profession. She had her own professional ambitions, but she
still she cared really deeply about the development of others
and the roots at black girls and black women took
in their careers and in their lives as well. So
in nineteen fifteen she got a master's degree in English
(14:09):
and comparative literature from Columbia University, and she began teaching
at Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, d c. And
she taught English at Armstrong for four years before she
became the vice principle, which that job itself morphed into
the position of Dean of Girls. So this title and
(14:30):
the responsibilities that came along with it, they were highly
regarded and it prepared her for the positions that she
would have in the future. Of course, all of this stuff,
you can, you know, look at her history and see
how one thing is building up to the next, you know,
from teaching to dean um and to like president of
all these organizations and how all of her her social consciousness,
(14:52):
her interests in social justice and issues like racism, and
issues like education of black women, a those things kind
of aligned to create this very specific and like bright
path that she followed. She also won the first women's
national singles Championship of the American Tennis Association in nineteen seventeen.
(15:15):
So she was good at it. Unlike me, I'm like,
I know what I was. I wasn't saying that for you.
I was saying us. I'm like not just yeah, she
was really good at it, and so she was awarded
in it, and uh, that was a pretty big spot
in her first and in nineteen nineteen she became the
principal of the first junior high school for black students
(15:36):
in d C, which was Shaw. While she was there,
she established a teacher development program and as far as personally,
like I said, there were also other issues that she
was interested in, and she advocated for black women who
participated in the suffrage movement as well. That was something
that she spoke out about. But back to her education.
In two she was appointed the first permanent dean of
(16:00):
women at Howard University. She was also hired at the
same time as a professor of English in the School
of Education, and when she was hired, she sent a
statement to the current president of the university laying out
what the terms of her employment were. So those included
that the salary for the two positions wouldn't be less
(16:21):
than three thousand and two hundred dollars and that all
policies pertaining to women in the university would come from
her office with the approval of the president. And there
were some other terms that she laid out in that saying,
did I get this right based on the conversation that
we had, this is what the positions are gonna look
like for me. And she immediately became really active in
(16:44):
the school and instituted things. She was also active in
the city of d C within that educated black middle
class that she was also a part of, and she
was immersed in the arts, particularly dance and theater. She
joined a literary club and a d Boys Circle, which
was a black women's club that discussed things like arts
(17:04):
and current events and other issues. And in ninete she
became the first president of the National Association of College Women,
which was an organization of black women in college graduates
at Liberal Arts colleges and universities, and you know that
this is also just in alignment with all the other
things she was doing. So in the first statement that
(17:26):
she gave as part of that organization, she noted that
it was formed to raise the standards and the colleges
where black women were educated, and to make better conditions
for black women's faculty, and to encourage more advanced scholarship
among women. And another thing that people have pointed out
(17:46):
about her stories that she was involved in the church
and she would sing in church choirs, but she was
also sometimes a bit critical of the traditional Black church
and the role that it played and how Black women
were affected by it. But um, she was really heavily
involved in her community in many different facets like and
(18:08):
obviously educational work is also community work, so she was
she just had her hands in so many, so many
pots when it came to the cultures that she was
invested in, education, the arts, and church. So she Yeah,
she organized tease for women's dormitories, and she also gave
(18:29):
an annual garden party at her home for the students.
But that's not to say that there wasn't any conflict
during her time at the University. In ninet Mordecai Johnson
became the first black president at Howard and they kind
of clashed from the beginning. So, for instance, he would
(18:50):
deny her request for pay raises, cut budgets for her,
took her office, some of the council's tried to get
her to live on campus, so they definitely put heads
over the time. But she stayed there until the time
that she died, so she was there for quite a
while um and made a lot of changes while she
was there, So women's education and leadership were things that
(19:13):
were very important to her. There was a nineteen thirty
one speech at the Teacher's College at Columbia University, and
(19:35):
I'll give you a quote from that speech. She said,
in the first place, most college administrators must change their
philosophy of education and reference to their women's students. They
must realize that, whether they like it or not, the
life that women are leading today is different from that
which was led by their grandmothers. For this present day
(19:57):
life demands that women must be ready to make their
contribution not only to the home, but also to the economic, political,
and civic life of the communities. So it's clear that
that was something that she was invested in herself and
was really interested in leaving other people to live that
sort of life and recognized that things were changing. She
(20:19):
advocated for the independence of women and for them branching
out in terms of what they pursued in their courses
of study. So all of these things were really merging
in her story, and she helped found the National Council
of Negro Women with Mary McLoud Bassoon, and she served
as the organization's first executive secretary. She was also interested
(20:41):
in the peace movement and was a member of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. And it's the
thing that you know, people have talked about more in
her story in terms of her companionship with Mary Burrow,
who was a well known teacher and playwright in dc UM.
They lived together for the last fifteen years of Lucy
(21:05):
dig Slows life, and there was speculation that there were lovers.
And yeah, she remained Dean of Women until she died
in nineteen thirty seven of some health complications. And she's
had a bunch of things named after her, like a
dorm at Howard and a boring machine, which makes sense
(21:27):
based on her name. Lucy Dig slows just like lends
itself to pense. But she did so much during the
time that she was alive in regards to education and
the community work. And I think that her legacy really
lives on and people have acknowledged that in various ways
when it comes to actually naming things after her and
(21:49):
recognizing the work that she's done and trying to, you know,
get things making sure that we acknowledge the spaces that
she was in her house as historic place is and
her as a pioneer of the work that she was doing.
When you first sent the name, I was looking up like, Okay,
what what's she all about? And it was just like
(22:11):
so much, so much accomplished in a relatively short amount
of time. You can tell she had a passion and
was just fighting for it and then really made some
some changes. It's very impressive, very inspirational. Yea for sure.
And she's also part of this larger history too, when
it comes to something like the a k A sorority history,
(22:34):
the history of Howard University and HBCUs, like there's also
this looming is it's like a negative word, but like
this overarching history of black people, of black education, of
women's education and all of those other offshoots of the
things that she was doing. She was wrapped up in that.
(22:56):
And also Harlem Renaissance kind of eating into that too,
So yeah, she she was definitely Arson culture like that
was another element of the things she was interested in.
So yeah, it's she touched a lot of points, and
I think it's fascinating in that way where it's like
we can learn so much just from the way she
was moving and the things that she was interested in
(23:18):
about the time, and about the causes and the issues
that people were concerned with, and and how her upbringing
lt to that. Yeah, and also tennis also tennis, I
keep forgetting about that sport. Yes, yeah, that's that's always
impressive to me when people have those like two things
(23:40):
that they're really good at that aren't correlated necessarily, and
you're like, it's like, how do you have the time? Yeah,
this is making me want to play tennis. I'll tell
you that. It's I still in my old racket, but
it's been a minute, so I think it might be
a disaster. M H. I believe in you. Thank you, Eves,
(24:03):
thank you. I need all the help. I think, yes,
there anything else that you want to add before we
wrap up. No, I think that's all okay, Well, where
can the good listeners find you? Eves? Y'all can find
me at Eaves Jeff Coo on Twitter at not Apologizing
on Instagram. You can also listen to the shows This
(24:26):
Day in History Class, which is a daily show about
people and events in history. You can listen to Unpopular,
which is about people in history who really defied the
status quo and we're persecuted for it in some way
and what their stories were and yeah, and then on
female first ex and I think I think this might
(24:48):
have been our or big, but I think we'll just
say the next one is, so that's the one. Yeah,
we'll just make it up. We play hard and fast.
WHI out rules here. Thank you so much as always
for being here. Eve's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
(25:09):
and thanks to the listeners. Please go check us out
if you haven't already. You can email us if you
would like at Stephanie Dea mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast or on Instagram at stuff I've Never tells you.
Thanks as always to your super producer Christina. Thank you Chrissena,
and thanks to you for listening stuff I never told you.
It's a production of I Heart Radio from more podcast
(25:31):
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Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
I've never told you protection of Hiar Radio. It's time
for another female first, which means we are once again
so happy to be joined to have joining us, to
(00:25):
be joined by our good friend and co worker Eve's hives.
Hi Hi. Was that stumble over that based on the
fact that you said that in passive voice or was
that just like a way that you must say it.
It's interesting you say that because in high school I
had a very very intense grammar teacher and she was
(00:49):
like well known throughout the school for making people cry.
She was really strict, and she hated the passive voice.
And so when I catch myself writing in it or
do it, even if I think sometimes it's not as
big a deal as she made it out to be,
or that it fits the situation, I hear Mrs Ham's
voice in the back of my head. So it is
(01:12):
a thing where clearly I still get hug up on it.
I didn't mean to call you out on that. It's
just it was just that something that I noticed, you know,
as a person who was an editor and you know,
thinks about grammar because it's one of those things that
never really mattered, like at all of what it does
actually make something a little bit more difficult to understand.
But like there are so many things that may matter
(01:34):
on the page that shouldn't be staunch rules when we're
just like speaking. So I just related, Yeah, well, thank
you picked up on it. I think about it every
day because the part of this job is communicating and writing,
and I'm always like, how can I write this and
not the passive voice, which actually relates to kind of
(01:55):
what I was going to ask before we get into this,
because we've been talking about sororities and fraternity these and
all of this relates to the topic to the woman
we're going to discuss today. But I was curious how
both of you your college experiences were, how you kind
of remember them. You don't have to go in depth,
but you know, kind of on the surface, how was
it for you. I wanted Samantha to go first. Oh, man,
(02:18):
I was first. I try to see because mine's boring.
Like I'm super religious in college, so I did a
lot of like religious things, including mission trips. And I
really regret, not regret the people that I've met, because
I feel like I've met some really cool people. But
if I had to do it over again, I would
(02:39):
have made a few more mistakes. I feel like I've
missed out on a lot of that. I did tell
my niece, who just recently graduated college, when she started,
I was like, enjoy it, truly, enjoy it, do what
you want, and don't be afraid to do some mischievous
not illegal necessarily, but mischievous things, and make good friend shows.
(03:02):
But yeah, I was really boring, not bad. Like we
were talking some of the things that I had some
flashbacks and going to Tate Center at the University of Georgia,
which is where all the kids hung out, or any
of the organizations that try to recruit you, or even
our college campus preachers who would just scream at people.
That was where they hung out. So that's what I
remember when we were talking about all of that, And
of course we were talking about sororities and trying to
(03:24):
be recruited. That's where they hung out majority of the time.
But yeah, very very boring essentially. Yeah, that didn't sound
boring to me at all. I mean, I just I
let me think college was good. I don't know, I
feel like it was a lot different than my high
school experience was coming out of high school obviously, as
(03:46):
it is for like many people, but I was like,
I was a nerd, and I've been a nerd and
I'm still a nerd. So I was still that throughout college.
But I did have a lot of fun, like you know,
I spent I was in Atlanta for most of my time,
I was in Savana for some of my time, and
in France for a very short time. But yeah, I
had a great time. I feel like I had a
(04:08):
good school work life balance. Surprisingly, like I was able
to still have new experiences with my friends and meet
new people and party and did make a lot of mistakes,
so that one Samantha Um, But I enjoyed it. You know,
(04:32):
I wouldn't do anything differently. I I feel like the
reason I chose Georgia Tech was a very foolish reason.
It was mostly monetary. But the second thing was I
thought I was in Atlanta so I had party a lot.
That's not the case. I definitely party more now than
I did. So I really enjoyed college because I also
have a nerd and I love like reading and I
(04:53):
love challenging points of view or just new ways of
thinking that I owner there those like terrifying liberal new
thoughts that you have, but I hated homework and I
still hate homework, and so it was like, if I
could just go to the class and have the Dorom experience,
that was amazing. The homework experience was a nightmare. Yeah,
(05:17):
And I also in high school, I didn't have to study.
In college, it was like, oh wow, here's a scene
for sure. But yeah, I had some fun times. And
I actually started running for the first time again in
over a year, which means I had to. I brought
out my old playlist, my old exercise playlist, and so
(05:40):
many of the songs on there, or like songs I
loved in college. I'd be walking on Skyles walk Away
and this song would be playing, and it just brought
back a lot of a lot of those memories. Yeah. Yeah,
I love those songs that you can pinpoint moments in
time that they're related to and they become kind of
like the medic songs in your life. But it's funny
because I was the opposite of you, Annie. I don't know,
(06:03):
in college, I wasn't really yeah, but I was the
opposite of you in terms of homework. I have a
literal VHS tape of me when I was a child
in elementary school saying that I loved homework, Like when
I don't. I don't remember what I was being interview for.
I think I was in like some sort of play
and somebody asked me, like, Eaves, what do you like
(06:23):
or what do you like to do? And I was like,
homework so cute? Yeah, so I can't really bear loves homework.
I loved homework intill college. Oh no, I loved it
elementary school and middle school. I hated it in high school.
And but yes I would ask for extra mass sheets
(06:47):
because I loved doing all the calculation. I see. So
it it morphed, It transforms somehow somewhere along the way.
It did. It did when the professors were like, read
this three books tonight, and your whole score, your whole
g p A depends on the outcome of this one test.
(07:09):
That was not good for me, as I had a
nightmares about commas, mainly because later in the like AP
English and all of that, they're like, each common mistake
is thirty points and I'm like what what? And I
failed because of my one and a half common mistakes.
I still have nightmares about that. I think Commas, I
think we should relax about Comma. That's the quotable from
(07:33):
this episode. I think we still like about that. That
is a true belief that I hold. This all relates
to the person that we're talking about today, perhaps tangentially,
(07:57):
but it does. So who did you bring for us
to discuss today's Yeah, we have Lucy Dig's slow. So
she had a lot of first Like she was a
pioneer in many ways, and she is related to what
we were just talking about because she was in the
education field in school, she was a teacher, and she
cared a lot about the education and development of girls
(08:20):
and of black girls and women specifically. So she has
a lot of accomplishments, Like we could go down the
list of all of the organizations and the civil and
community and educational ventures, various ventures that she was involved in.
But as far as first, she was the first Dean
of Women at Howard University, and so the Dean of
(08:42):
Women was kind of this role where it was like
student affairs for women, like counseling, discipline, and student experiences
for the women's students at the school. Um. She was
also the first president of the National Association of College Women,
and she was one of the founders of the Alpha
Kappa Alpha sorority. So she is a big name in
(09:02):
the early nineteen hundreds and she did a lot in
terms of pioneering when it came to education for girls
and women and black women specifically in the US. Yes,
also tennis player. Also tennis player. How can I forget that? Yes,
that is also one of our first that we'll get to.
(09:24):
Tennis player. I've played tennis for a few years in
high school to speaking of, um, was not great at it.
It was one of those things where my dad was like,
he was really into tennis and he wanted me to
really be into tennis. And I actually really enjoyed it,
but I was also very bad. It is a fun sport.
I've actually been wanting to play it again in recent
(09:46):
years because it's it's a pretty accessible to Like, no,
it doesn't cost that much to have a rack in
their tennis course in a lot of places. Yeah. Yeah,
So I really suck at tennis. I tried because my
all of my friends played, all of them played, and
I hope not great at sports outside of like give
me something to throw. Sure, but I remember a dude
(10:07):
who was flirting with me high to teach me I
was so bad he dropped his racket and walked off
within the first ten minutes. So I was like co
co cool. So I never learned it's no good. That
guy's no good. I've seen you play some Mario perty
tennis with decent amount of success. Yes, give me a week.
(10:29):
I still have to have some wrist action. There some
similar motor skills happening. Maybe it's the aim where it
just goes out of the tennis court with like the
tall chain like fans. It doesn't matter how tall it is,
I'll still get it out of there. So you're the
person who makes the person have to leave the court
every time. Who's not wrong for quinnin walking away? And
(10:53):
there's nothing wrong with what he did. It was an
absolute correct reaction. Yeah, So me and my friends used
to in high school. We would go at night at
like nine pm and there'd be no one there and
we play what we called for court tennis, and it
was some of the best exercise I've ever got in
my life because basically, the ball, as long as it
was bouncing, it was still employee. No matter where it was.
It was so fun. That sounds tiring, but yeah, you
(11:16):
gotta because you would hit it on like the ford court,
the opposite court. The other person's gotta run over there.
It was awesome anyway, all right, our tennis stories aside.
Shall we get into the story here, Yeah, let's do it.
So Lucy Dick Flow she was born July fourth, and
there's some discrepancy over the day whether that was eight
(11:37):
three or eighteen eighty five, but she was born in
Virginia and she was the youngest of seven children. Her
parents were Henry and Fanny Slow. They died when she
was pretty young, so she went to live with an
aunt in Lexington, Virginia. And in an autobiographical story, like
a semi autobiographical story of hers, she said that she
(11:58):
was going to live with her aunt, who quote didn't
believe in playing in the mud or with boys or
running up and down the road was more than I
could bear. So there was a lot of talk of
how her aunt was big on education and discipline, and
you can kind of tell that in her story as well,
because years later she moved to Baltimore with her family.
(12:22):
Apparently her aunt wanted them to go there so that
she would have a better education, so schools were segregated
at the time. She went to Baltimore High School and
she was pretty competitive in school. She graduated as salutatorian
and she decided that she wanted to go to college.
So using money that she got from scholarships and that
(12:44):
she got from jobs that she worked, she was able
to attend Howard University, which is an HBCU in d
C that was established back in sixty seven. She was
the first girl from Baltimore High to go to Howard
in the first to get a scholarship. And she was
super involved in things while she was at the university,
Like this is another place where you can go down
the list of things. She was involved in sports and
(13:07):
in student organizations, and it was here where she was
a founding member of a KA, which was the first
national Greek sorority for black women, which we talked about
a little bit talk um and the tennis comes in
here too because she was also president of the women's
tennis club. And she graduated from Howard in nineteen o eight.
(13:28):
So after graduating, she went back to Baltimore and she
taught English at Baltimore High School and she began teaching
at a time when public school officials were really hiring
black people to teach black students. And she once wrote
that she what she chose teaching the profession because she
was happier in that profession than she was in any
(13:49):
other profession. She had her own professional ambitions, but she
still she cared really deeply about the development of others
and the roots at black girls and black women took
in their careers and in their lives as well. So
in nineteen fifteen she got a master's degree in English
(14:09):
and comparative literature from Columbia University, and she began teaching
at Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, d c. And
she taught English at Armstrong for four years before she
became the vice principle, which that job itself morphed into
the position of Dean of Girls. So this title and
(14:30):
the responsibilities that came along with it, they were highly
regarded and it prepared her for the positions that she
would have in the future. Of course, all of this stuff,
you can, you know, look at her history and see
how one thing is building up to the next, you know,
from teaching to dean um and to like president of
all these organizations and how all of her her social consciousness,
(14:52):
her interests in social justice and issues like racism, and
issues like education of black women, a those things kind
of aligned to create this very specific and like bright
path that she followed. She also won the first women's
national singles Championship of the American Tennis Association in nineteen seventeen.
(15:15):
So she was good at it. Unlike me, I'm like,
I know what I was. I wasn't saying that for you.
I was saying us. I'm like not just yeah, she
was really good at it, and so she was awarded
in it, and uh, that was a pretty big spot
in her first and in nineteen nineteen she became the
principal of the first junior high school for black students
(15:36):
in d C, which was Shaw. While she was there,
she established a teacher development program and as far as personally,
like I said, there were also other issues that she
was interested in, and she advocated for black women who
participated in the suffrage movement as well. That was something
that she spoke out about. But back to her education.
In two she was appointed the first permanent dean of
(16:00):
women at Howard University. She was also hired at the
same time as a professor of English in the School
of Education, and when she was hired, she sent a
statement to the current president of the university laying out
what the terms of her employment were. So those included
that the salary for the two positions wouldn't be less
(16:21):
than three thousand and two hundred dollars and that all
policies pertaining to women in the university would come from
her office with the approval of the president. And there
were some other terms that she laid out in that saying,
did I get this right based on the conversation that
we had, this is what the positions are gonna look
like for me. And she immediately became really active in
(16:44):
the school and instituted things. She was also active in
the city of d C within that educated black middle
class that she was also a part of, and she
was immersed in the arts, particularly dance and theater. She
joined a literary club and a d Boys Circle, which
was a black women's club that discussed things like arts
(17:04):
and current events and other issues. And in ninete she
became the first president of the National Association of College Women,
which was an organization of black women in college graduates
at Liberal Arts colleges and universities, and you know that
this is also just in alignment with all the other
things she was doing. So in the first statement that
(17:26):
she gave as part of that organization, she noted that
it was formed to raise the standards and the colleges
where black women were educated, and to make better conditions
for black women's faculty, and to encourage more advanced scholarship
among women. And another thing that people have pointed out
(17:46):
about her stories that she was involved in the church
and she would sing in church choirs, but she was
also sometimes a bit critical of the traditional Black church
and the role that it played and how Black women
were affected by it. But um, she was really heavily
involved in her community in many different facets like and
(18:08):
obviously educational work is also community work, so she was
she just had her hands in so many, so many
pots when it came to the cultures that she was
invested in, education, the arts, and church. So she Yeah,
she organized tease for women's dormitories, and she also gave
(18:29):
an annual garden party at her home for the students.
But that's not to say that there wasn't any conflict
during her time at the University. In ninet Mordecai Johnson
became the first black president at Howard and they kind
of clashed from the beginning. So, for instance, he would
(18:50):
deny her request for pay raises, cut budgets for her,
took her office, some of the council's tried to get
her to live on campus, so they definitely put heads
over the time. But she stayed there until the time
that she died, so she was there for quite a
while um and made a lot of changes while she
was there, So women's education and leadership were things that
(19:13):
were very important to her. There was a nineteen thirty
one speech at the Teacher's College at Columbia University, and
(19:35):
I'll give you a quote from that speech. She said,
in the first place, most college administrators must change their
philosophy of education and reference to their women's students. They
must realize that, whether they like it or not, the
life that women are leading today is different from that
which was led by their grandmothers. For this present day
(19:57):
life demands that women must be ready to make their
contribution not only to the home, but also to the economic, political,
and civic life of the communities. So it's clear that
that was something that she was invested in herself and
was really interested in leaving other people to live that
sort of life and recognized that things were changing. She
(20:19):
advocated for the independence of women and for them branching
out in terms of what they pursued in their courses
of study. So all of these things were really merging
in her story, and she helped found the National Council
of Negro Women with Mary McLoud Bassoon, and she served
as the organization's first executive secretary. She was also interested
(20:41):
in the peace movement and was a member of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. And it's the
thing that you know, people have talked about more in
her story in terms of her companionship with Mary Burrow,
who was a well known teacher and playwright in dc UM.
They lived together for the last fifteen years of Lucy
(21:05):
dig Slows life, and there was speculation that there were lovers.
And yeah, she remained Dean of Women until she died
in nineteen thirty seven of some health complications. And she's
had a bunch of things named after her, like a
dorm at Howard and a boring machine, which makes sense
(21:27):
based on her name. Lucy Dig slows just like lends
itself to pense. But she did so much during the
time that she was alive in regards to education and
the community work. And I think that her legacy really
lives on and people have acknowledged that in various ways
when it comes to actually naming things after her and
(21:49):
recognizing the work that she's done and trying to, you know,
get things making sure that we acknowledge the spaces that
she was in her house as historic place is and
her as a pioneer of the work that she was doing.
When you first sent the name, I was looking up like, Okay,
what what's she all about? And it was just like
(22:11):
so much, so much accomplished in a relatively short amount
of time. You can tell she had a passion and
was just fighting for it and then really made some
some changes. It's very impressive, very inspirational. Yea for sure.
And she's also part of this larger history too, when
it comes to something like the a k A sorority history,
(22:34):
the history of Howard University and HBCUs, like there's also
this looming is it's like a negative word, but like
this overarching history of black people, of black education, of
women's education and all of those other offshoots of the
things that she was doing. She was wrapped up in that.
(22:56):
And also Harlem Renaissance kind of eating into that too,
So yeah, she she was definitely Arson culture like that
was another element of the things she was interested in.
So yeah, it's she touched a lot of points, and
I think it's fascinating in that way where it's like
we can learn so much just from the way she
was moving and the things that she was interested in
(23:18):
about the time, and about the causes and the issues
that people were concerned with, and and how her upbringing
lt to that. Yeah, and also tennis also tennis, I
keep forgetting about that sport. Yes, yeah, that's that's always
impressive to me when people have those like two things
(23:40):
that they're really good at that aren't correlated necessarily, and
you're like, it's like, how do you have the time? Yeah,
this is making me want to play tennis. I'll tell
you that. It's I still in my old racket, but
it's been a minute, so I think it might be
a disaster. M H. I believe in you. Thank you, Eves,
(24:03):
thank you. I need all the help. I think, yes,
there anything else that you want to add before we
wrap up. No, I think that's all okay, Well, where
can the good listeners find you? Eves? Y'all can find
me at Eaves Jeff Coo on Twitter at not Apologizing
on Instagram. You can also listen to the shows This
(24:26):
Day in History Class, which is a daily show about
people and events in history. You can listen to Unpopular,
which is about people in history who really defied the
status quo and we're persecuted for it in some way
and what their stories were and yeah, and then on
female first ex and I think I think this might
(24:48):
have been our or big, but I think we'll just
say the next one is, so that's the one. Yeah,
we'll just make it up. We play hard and fast.
WHI out rules here. Thank you so much as always
for being here. Eve's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
(25:09):
and thanks to the listeners. Please go check us out
if you haven't already. You can email us if you
would like at Stephanie Dea mom Stuff at iHeart media
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast or on Instagram at stuff I've Never tells you.
Thanks as always to your super producer Christina. Thank you Chrissena,
and thanks to you for listening stuff I never told you.
It's a production of I Heart Radio from more podcast
(25:31):
on my Heart Radio, visiting radio app, Apple podcast, or
wherever you listen to your favorite ships.
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