Lesson 167:
Otelia Cromwell
An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 12/4/2024
"Most of all, I want the work I may do in the years to come --if the years are granted me-- to be critically sound."
Meet Washington, D.C.'s own Otelia Cromwell, scholar, professor, and long-term inspiration to many. Born in 1874 into a time when the nation's capital boasted the singular (and unusual) highest percentage of educated African Americans in all of the United States; an uncharacteristic atmosphere of relative social equality among Free Blacks and recently-freed Blacks, where great cultural emphasis was placed on literacy --the city was then known as the capital of "Colored Aristocracy." Otelia was born to Lucy McGuinn and John Wesley Cromwell, the first of six children. John Wesley was himself a lawyer, educator, and journalist who instilled in his eldest daughter the values of education as the best path to one's own personal and economic power. John Wesley was a founding member of the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, a forum which boasted W.E.B. Du Bois (see Lesson #1 in this series) and Frederick Douglass (Lesson #2) as occasional guest speakers. With a childhood steeped in this kind of exposure, it is little surprise that Otelia took the risk of transferring from Howard University to Smith College (already a prestigious liberal arts college for women), where she excelled in classical studies and from which she eventually graduated in 1900 --making her its first-ever Black woman to matriculate. She pivoted easily into an education career of her own, teaching language studies at the famed M Street School (see Lessons #138 and #145 in this series for more on this particular institution), but eventually turned her attention to postgraduate studies --a brave act in itself given the entrenched segregated systems that surrounded her.
In 1910, Otelia Cromwell first earned her Master's degree from Columbia University, and then in 1926 attained a Ph.D in English from Yale --the first-ever Black woman to earn a doctorate degree from that school. In 1930 she returned to her beloved District of Columbia as a professor of English Language and Literature, at Miner Teachers College (which would later become the University of the District of Columbia); and she herself rose to chair of the literature department. She taught at Miner until her retirement in 1944; editing and publishing many studies during her time there --significantly Readings From Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges (1931), which she co-edited with Du Bois. In 1958 the Harvard University Press published her definitive scholarly work; a study of the life and achievements of Quaker abolitionist and activist Lucretia Mott.
Cromwell's choice of Mott as her subject was no whim; she had long studied Mott's role in shaping women's rights; openly noting the paradox of a nation that paid lip-service to democracy and social equality, but yet demanded a segregated Armed Forces. In many ways Cromwell foresaw the civil rights movements of the 1960's, confidently predicting that her own students would soon find in themselves the strength and perseverance to effect substantive change. Cromwell died in 1972 at the age of 98. In 1989 Smith College instituted the tradition of Cromwell Day; a celebration of Otelia's determined life of quiet but firm barrier-breaking. This day expanded to also include the achievements of Otelia's niece (and fellow Smith alum) Adelaide Cromwell, who would eventually be the first Black professor to be appointed at Smith. The Day is devoted to exploring community partnerships and individual responsibilities to better identify --and address-- structural racism and intrinsic oppression.
Next lesson - Lesson 168: Thomas Finch
Return to www.petervintonjr.com Main Page