The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink

waved American flags and bore signs and sashes in suffrage colors of purple, white, and gold that bore the words “Votes for Women.” About 500,000 spectators gathered along the route.

      Everyone was welcome to participate, with one exception. In a city that was southern in both location and attitude, where the Christmas Eve rape of a government clerk by a black man had percolated racist sentiments, Paul was convinced that some white women would not march with black women. In response to several inquiries, she had quietly discouraged blacks from participating.

      Aware they were not wanted and in spite of fear that they may be attacked, a new Howard University African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, joined the procession. African American activists believed that if white women needed the vote to secure their rights, black women needed it even more. They faced discrimination on two levels—sex and race. The parade was the group’s first public act. Today, Delta Sigma Theta is one of the largest African American women’s organizations in the country, with an estimated 300,000 members around the world and a chapter at Purdue University.

      Meanwhile, panicky reports came from white suffragists in Chicago that Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist and suffragist who led an antilynching campaign, planned to join the procession. When the Illinois unit assembled in the parade line, leaders of the group instructed Wells-Barnett to walk with an all-black group rather than under the flag of her home state. With tears in her eyes, Wells-Barnett refused to participate in the procession unless “I can march under the Illinois banner.”

      Wells-Barnett stood from the sidelines watching the cavalcade until she decided to solve the issue herself by defiantly walking, mid-parade, from the sidelines into the Illinois group, matching their stride and ignoring their stares. Wells-Barnett once said, “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

      Few would notice Wells-Barnett’s bold move for the parade was about to turn to mayhem. Some of the onlookers, mostly men in town for the presidential inauguration, jeered, “Go back home where you belong.” Men surged into the street, making it difficult for the parade to pass. They snatched banners, grabbed at clothing, and tried to climb onto floats. Women were tripped, grabbed, shoved, spat upon, and many heard “indecent epithets” and “barnyard conversation.” The men marching in the parade were met with degrading remarks, such as, “Where are your skirts?”

      Rather than protecting the marchers, some of the police were amused by the sneers and laughter and joined in. A mass of humanity filled the streets, wearing bowlers and wide-brimmed hats, bundled in coats and gloves. While many policemen turned a blind eye to the marchers’ degrading and frightening circumstances, the unexpected heroes of the march were 1,500 Boy Scouts of America.

      The Boy Scouts had been invited to the parade in full uniform—knickers, boots, hats, and staves—as volunteers to help with law enforcement. Their organization had been founded just three years earlier. Little did the Boy Scouts know when they agreed to assist the police, they would have to actually defend marchers from police inaction. The boys attempted to hold back the crowds and assisted the two ambulances that traveled to and from the hospital for six hours shuttling the one hundred injured. Eventually, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson authorized the use of a troop of cavalry from nearby Fort Myer to help control the crowd.

      Boys’ Life magazine featured a four-page article about the Scouts’ deeds in its April 1913 issue. The magazine reported that while the police initially told the Boy Scouts to stay behind their lines, the crowd soon overwhelmed law enforcement. Police were begging scouts for help and borrowing their staves. As a young organization, the Boy Scouts of America relished the good press. The Boys’ Life article concluded, “Washington and its respectable visitors will not soon forget the spectacle of boys in the uniform that stands for learning the principles of good citizenship actually restraining grown men from acting the part of brutes.”

      Even with the numerous difficulties, many marchers completed the parade route, which ended at the Treasury Building.

      The mistreatment of the marchers by both the crowd and the police led to Senate subcommittee hearings with more than 150 witnesses recounting their experiences. The superintendent of police for the District of Columbia lost his job. The committee heard multiple mentions of the heroic Boy Scouts.

      Despite the anger and violence, the suffragists considered the march a success, for it was the first national expression of demand for an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women. The public outcry and press coverage after the event helped the suffragists’ cause.

      The parade reinvigorated the suffrage movement and aided in propelling the country toward the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification on August 18, 1920. With a parade, a vision, and courage, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns reignited a national ardor for the women’s vote.

      This was America for women when Carolyn Shoemaker became the first dean of women at Purdue University.

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       ARTISTS OF LIFE

      SIX YEARS AFTER CAROLYN SHOEMAKER was appointed Purdue’s first dean of women, Stanley Coulter, Carolyn’s former instructor, was named Purdue’s first dean of men. Slowly, universities in the United States added the Office of the Dean of Men during the 1910s and 1920s. Administrators were jittery about women on campus, so they made rules and regulations for them and thought a dean of women was needed to guide the girls. The male students were left to their own devices with few rules, so at the outset, administrators didn’t think they needed a dean of men.

      In 1916, the deans of women united officially and founded the National Association of Deans of Women (NADW), a branch of the National Education Association (NEA). The first annual meeting, organized by Kathryn Sisson Phillips, dean of women at Ohio Wesleyan University, was entitled “What a Dean of Women Is—What Her Duties Are.” Gertrude S. Martin gave the key address at the first program and pinpointed poetically what a dean does:

      We are trying to define the dean. Some say the dean is just a chaperone—a nice, ladylike person. Others say the dean is a necessary evil, a concession.… Others say the dean is a sort of adjunct to the President, because the President usually lacks at least one of the qualifications for the dean.

      The fact is the dean of women is unique! She is expected to teach and do a great many other things. She is preeminently a teacher of the art of living. She asks: How many of us are artists of life ourselves?

      Often when a group of women come together, there is a sisterhood formed that can facilitate change. The collecting of deans of women was no different. In the decades to follow, the NADW would prove to be a lobbying powerhouse and a force of nature as it connected deans of women throughout the country in common goals for females everywhere. Their discussions and resolutions were on cutting-edge topics. They came to define themselves as humanists. Future Purdue deans of women would make their marks and become known throughout the United States through the NADW, later named the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors (NAWDC).

      The early deans of women established the foundations of professional practice for student affairs and higher education administration. They developed a body of professional literature, which included journals, research reports, and books. The deans of women at Purdue would write many papers for such periodicals.

      The pioneering women of NADW worked hard to “professionalize” the position of dean and to legitimize her role. The deans of women were early champions of the scientific methods of guidance for students. After World War I, their vocation would be termed “student personnel work.” They often challenged each other and their campuses to “do the right thing” by women. During their first informal meeting in Chicago in 1903, the country’s collective deans of women passed a resolution condemning “gender segregation” in higher education. This cause to condemn gender segregation in universities perpetuates still today.

      In “How the Deans of Women Became