Where We Matter: Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe, Howard Women, and the Co-Creation of Campus Belonging, 1922–1937

What does it mean for Black women to feel included in higher education? What does it look like when Black college women know they matter to their institutions? Lucy Diggs Slowe (1883–1937), the first trained African American dean of women, placed these questions at the center of her work at her alma mater, Howard University. From 1922 to 1937 Dean Slowe worked with Howard undergraduates to build an extracurricular program focused on Black women’s community, personal growth, and joy. Drawing on student newspaper accounts about her efforts and impact, Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant describes Slowe’s philosophy of “living more abundantly” and the ways it operationalized a sense of belonging and inclusion for Black Howard women. Beauboeuf-Lafontant is Louise R. Noun Chair in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College. A womanist social scientist, she researches everyday and embodied experiences of racialized gender. She is the author of Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance and To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe. This event is cosponsored by the University of Georgia Press