Field Day Baseball, circa 1913

Despite our current frigid temperatures, snow-covered lawns, and icicles hanging from every roof, spring is around the corner. For baseball fans, the opening of Major League Baseball’s spring training provides hope that summer is coming soon. Baseball has a long history at Vassar College, and our Digital Library contains some tantalizing details about how the sport was played here.

The first mention of a baseball game at Vassar comes through a letter that Annie Glidden (VC 1869) wrote to her brother, John, in April 1866:

They are getting up various clubs now for out-of-door exercise. They have a floral society, boat clubs, and base-ball clubs. I belong to one of the latter, and enjoy it, hugely, I can assure you. Our ground was measured off this morning. We think, after we have practiced a little, we will let the Atlantic Club play a match with us. Or, it may be, we will consent to play a match with the students from College Hill: but we have not decided yet. [1]

As historian Debra Shattuck chronicles, Glidden was a member of the Laurel and Abenakis Base Ball Clubs, and she and the other twenty-two classmates who participated “…were among the first

College physician Helen Webster

women baseball players in the United States” [2]. The popularity of the sport was striking: prior to attending Vassar, students had often learned that physical activity would jeopardize their studies, health, and reputations in polite society. (We don’t know his reaction, but it’s possible that Glidden’s brother was aghast at her interest in baseball!) To counter this belief, College administrators created model physical training programs to improve the health and well being of their students. [3] Our Student Diaries and Student Letters collections are filled with stories of hiking at Lake Mohonk, club sports, and the benefits of exercise in general. As Nettie DeWitt (VC Ex-1896) wrote to her brother in October 1892, “You ought to come and visit me in the winter. Right across the road from the college grounds is a nice pond. In winter they skate there a great deal. Won’t it be fine? And they coast here too, and have lots of sport. I will get in more exercise than I do at home almost” [4]. College physician Helen Northing Webster encouraged students’ physical activity, even calling on athletes to play through their injuries [5].

The Resolutes, June 1876

Baseball’s popularity at Vassar waxed and waned through 1875, when The Vassar Miscellany asked, “Could base ball clubs be called improvements [on campus life] or the reverse?” [6] A June 1876 picture of Vassar’s team, The Resolutes, serves as a reminder that the club members were still interested in playing, though the sport’s popularity suffered an overall decline. Until 1909, there seems to be no evidence that students organized teams, though there was the somewhat popular “baseball throw” at Field Day competitions starting in 1895. [7] But the 20-year hiatus provided the opportunity for faculty and students to join forces in their love for baseball. In 1917, the Faculty-Student Founder’s Day baseball game began. By June 1920, Misc editors noted that the “excited audience” had lots of fun at “…the Faculty-Student baseball games for which Founder’s Day is famous” [8].

The Founder’s Day game was played through the 1960s, but by 1976, baseball seemed to be waning again on campus. A January 1976 Misc article noted that only three students were interested in creating a team to play at Prentiss Field, and it is unclear if any emerging baseball teams were going to be all male, all female, or coed. [9] Though baseball’s popularity declined, other sports surged: once Vassar became coeducational in 1969, the number of teams fielded and variety of sports increased, and a formal relationship with the NCAA was established. [10] Additionally, there were coed softball teams on and off again from the 1970 until at least 1995, and the Archives and Special Collections Library’s subject files have references to these teams. But baseball itself never did go away: the College joined the NCAA’s Division III for baseball in the 1980-1981 season, and though there is no record  — at least digitally — of any female club teams, there have been more than 30 years of men’s baseball teams. Interestingly, there was one point when the team was coed: outfielder Lilly Jacobson (VC 2010) was the only female player on Vassar’s baseball team from 2008-2010. [11]

While it’s still too chilly perhaps to play baseball ourselves, it’s the perfect temperature to read more about baseball at Vassar, whether online, at the Archives & Special Collections Library, or in the stacks. Shattuck’s excellent article on baseball and higher education in particular provides a wonderful narrative on the social history behind the teams. And while our digital collections provide insight into past and present baseball trends at Vassar, much more is waiting to be discovered — perhaps by a current or future scholar that is, of course, a baseball fan.

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Notes

[1] Annie Glidden Houts to John Glidden, April 20, 1866. http://digitallibrary.vassar.edu/fedora/repository/vassar:24406

[2] Shattuck, Debra A. “Bats, balls, and books: Baseball and higher education for women at three Eastern women’s colleges, 1866-1891.” Journal of Sports History, 19 (2), Summer 1992, p. 91-109. See also Shattuck’s 2017 book entitled Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers.

[3] Shattuck (1992), p. 91; p. 95-97.

[4] Nettie DeWitt to brother, Oct. 6, 1892. http://digitallibrary.vassar.edu/fedora/repository/vassar:24658

[5] Shattuck (1992), p. 99.

[6] The Vassar Miscellany, Volume V, Number 1, 1 October 1875. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&d=literary18751001-01.1.43&e=——-en-20–1–txt-IN——-

[7] Shattuck (1992), p. 103.

[8] “Faculty and students clash on diamond.” The Vassar Miscellany News, Volume IV, Number 57, 17 June 1920, p. 3. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&d=miscellany19200617-01.2.13&srpos=26&e=–1872—1920–en-20–21–txt-IN-baseball——

[9] Macleod, Tory. “Use of Diamond Depends on Interest.” Miscellany News, Volume LXIII, Number 2, 30 January 1976, p. 11. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&d=miscellany19760130-01.2.50&srpos=1&e=——197-en-20-miscellany-1–txt-IN-baseball+AND+women——#

[10] Marmer, Andy. “Vassar athletics always on the cutting edge.” Miscellany News, Volume CXLIV, Number 12, 18 January 2011, p. 14. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&d=miscellany20110118-01.2.45&srpos=1&e=——201-en-20-miscellany-1–txt-IN-baseball+AND+women+AND+club——

[11] O’Connor, Acacia. “Female baseball player feels at home with the boys.” Miscellany News, Volume LXXXIII, Number 22, 1 May 2008. http://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/cgi-bin/vassar?a=d&d=miscellany20080501-01.2.47&srpos=2&e=——-en-20-miscellany-1–txt-IN-lilly+jacobson——

Beatrix McCleary, June Jackson, and Camille Cottrell: 1944 and 1944-5 Vassarions.

February is African American History Month. The story of race at Vassar is long and complex, and a blog is hardly the forum to try to address even half of it, but one question that comes up time and again here in Archives and Special Collections is, “Who was the first Black graduate of Vassar College?” The quick answer is Anita Hemmings, VC 1897. Her story has been told in the Miscellany News, the Vassar Quarterly, and elsewhere. Often mentioned in the articles about Hemmings is her daughter, Ellen Love, who was a member of the class of 1927. There is less discussion, however, of Beatrix McCleary, VC 1944, Camille Cottrell, and June Jackson, both VC 1945-4 — and one could make the argument that it was those three women who were truly the first African Americans admitted to Vassar.

Anita Hemmings, ca. 1897

Anita Hemmings was of African American descent, and did indeed graduate from Vassar, but no one at Vassar knew she was Black until a few weeks before graduation. Hemmings had “passed” as white for four years, but in the spring of 1897, the father of a suspicious roommate undertook an investigation of Hemmings’ family in Boston, and revealed her heritage. Hemmings was allowed to graduate, but the faculty and trustees had to take the matter under consideration. There are no records of the trustee conversations on the issue, but not only did Hemmings graduate, she returned the following year for reunion. Hemmings’ daughter, Ellen Love, was also a Vassar graduate. She was raised in New York, where her mother continued to pass as white, as did her father, Dr. Andrew Love. It seems unlikely that someone in the Vassar administration didn’t make the connection between Hemmings and their daughter, but Love was admitted and graduated without incident. The college may have known Ellen Love’s family history, but it’s possible that Love herself didn’t know she had African American blood. Her parents raised their children to believe that they were white and seem to have broken ties with the “Blacker” sides of their families.

Ellen Love, 1927 Vassarion

So can we really say that Vassar was integrated with the arrival of Hemmings in 1894? No. Hemmings’ story is important, her bravery should be admired, and more research needs to be done about her experiences here. Indeed, the whole topic of passing is a painful and significant chapter in African American history, and how Hemmings fits into that story is well worth studying. However, Hemmings’ time at Vassar is not a tale of a college’s valiant stand for integration. As far as the world knew, Vassar did not accept African American students until 46 years later.

Beatrix McCleary Hamburg’s class will celebrate its 70th reunion this spring. Camille Cottrell Espeut and June Jackson Christmas will have theirs in 2015. All three have spoken fondly of their alma mater, but there’s no avoiding the truth that race was still an issue during thir time at Vassar. When asked if she experienced discrimination in college, Beatrix McCleary Hamburg said, “On the contrary, I felt that I was being killed with kindness.” But she also wrote that she was “bombarded” with questions about the Black world and felt that she “represented the Negro Problem — in capitals.” Both she and June Jackson Christmas felt that they were sometimes viewed not so much as fellow students, but rather as the answer to a larger social problem good liberal arts students should be concerned about. But there were more painful incidents as well, such as Christmas being told by a professor that a paper she’d written must have been plagiarized because “it didn’t sound like a Negro’s writing.” There were also things they might have suspected but never heard. In 1994, Phyllis Larsen reminisced at her 50th reunion about a night in 1942 when another white student became extremely uncomfortable after realizing she had accepted a seat at the same dining hall table as June Jackson. Larsen wondered if June realized what had happened. If she did, she certainly didn’t let on then, but she wrote later that sometimes the “personal pain at racist incidents was so deep that I could not share it with my new-found White friends…”

There’s so much more to research and ponder about the Black experience at Vassar. I’ve listed the sources I used for this brief post below, but if you have the interest and the opportunity, you are more than welcome to contact Archives and Special Collections to learn more. In the meanwhile, take a few minutes and watch this fascinating video featuring the first Black woman accepted at Vassar, Dr. Beatrix McCleary Hamburg:

Video by Eric Hamburg, available at http://vimeo.com/25206310

Sources for further research:

• McCleary, Beatrix. “Negro Student at Vassar”, Vassar Quarterly. June 1946, p 15.
• Christmas, June Jackson. “A Historical Overview: The Black Experience At Vassar.”, Vassar Quarterly, Spring 1988, p 3.
• Mancini, Olivia. “Passing as White: Anita Hemmings.” Vassar Quarterly, Winter 2001.
• Perkins, Linda M. “The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880-1960.” Harvard Educational Review, Winter 1997, p 718-756. Link to full text via VC Libraries
• Video interview by Eric Hamburg with his mother, Beatrix McCleary Hamburg, ca. 2012. Available at http://vimeo.com/25206310.
• Video interview of Beatrix Hamburg by Yale University, 2011. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OtwDfHwu8
• Video interview of Margaret Hamburg about her parents by Forbes Magazine, 2013. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJUkioDeU8.
• “Pioneering Activism: A Conversation with Dr. June Jackson Christmas ’45-4,” Video interview with June Jackson Christmas by Joshunda Saunders (VC 2000) during the 30th anniversary celebrations of the African American Alumnae/i of Vassar College (AAAVC), 2015. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLKy9MMLHe0
• Reunion booklets for the Classes of 1944 and 1945-4, Archives and Special Collections.
• Vassar College Digital Library