Forgotten Trailblazers

: African American Women’s Study Abroad in Europe, 1859-1935

Abstract

This thesis explores the study abroad experiences of forgotten trailblazing African American women who studied in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, their achievements at elite European institutions are overlooked, leaving a gap in the historical literature which this thesis fills. Facing barriers of slavery, Anti-Literacy Laws, race, gender, and doctrines of scientific intellectual inferiority, these women dared to challenge the prevailing attitudes of their time and place which restricted women’s access to higher education. The thesis focuses on three women: abolitionist and physician Sarah Parker Remond (1826- 1894), international civil rights activist and clubwoman Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), and diplomatic historian and disarmament expert Merze Tate (1905-1996).

A qualitative historical methodology is employed which examines and analyzes archives and primary sources including diaries, journals, correspondence, oral histories, autobiographies, and historic newspapers in addition to secondary sources. The theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist Thought and intersectionality are used to conceptualize the women’s experiences. The core questions investigate how they navigated race, gender, and class intersections and how their study abroad affected their identity, careers, and transnational activities.

This thesis makes several original contributions to knowledge. It brings together for the first time the study abroad histories of three influential African American women who studied in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It innovatively uses Black feminist epistemologies which offer other ways of knowing that go beyond the boundaries of default Eurocentric masculinist frameworks to demarginalize Black women’s study abroad history. By examining the women’s achievements through the gendered lens of Black Feminist Thought and intersectionality, I have created an original diachronic narrative which values the women’s subjective voices as particular rather than general.

The findings show they succeeded by using their ancestors’ reverence for education, their Black female agency characterized by initiative, determination, and resilience to navigate issues of race and gender. In addition, as educated women, Europeans granted them a higher-class status which gave them social mobility that aided their success. They resisted their racialized and gendered roles assigned at birth and dispelled the myth of Black female intellectual inferiority with their educational and professional achievements. They experienced few if any racial barriers in Europe compared to America, and they were intellectuals and feminists who were ahead of their time. They shattered every race, gender, and class ceiling they encountered and left an impressive legacy for today’s underrepresented Black women studying abroad in Europe

Date of Award	Mar 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Cathy Bergin (Supervisor), Anita Rupprecht (Supervisor) & Jonathan Watson (Supervisor)