Expressing and sharing the Black experience at Mount Holyoke has been an important means of educating and connecting current students, alums, and prospective students, as well as the greater campus community of faculty, staff, and administration. Race relations on campus were very rarely mentioned in the student newspaper and Alumnae Quarterly until the late 1960s. This article, written when the Third World Voices section of Mount Holyoke was started in 1979, puts it best:
“The Mount Holyoke community is supposed to be striving for a multiracial composition, yet it ignores the Third World Community that already exists here. Until the recent establishment of the Third World Page in Choragos, there has been nothing incorporated into the everyday life of the average White Mount Holyoke student that reflected a multiracial community except for the presence of Black, Latin and Asian women in some dorms and in some classes. As a result, many members of the Mount Holyoke community have many misconceptions about third world women and are virtually unaware of what it means to survive here as a Black, Latin, or Asian woman.”…
“The purpose of “Third World Voice” is threefold: Firstly, it is to inform the Third World Community of events that are pertinent to our existence at Mount Holyoke…. Through the media, Mount Holyoke women, faculty, and administrators will be better informed as to what our needs are and why particular events are of concern to us. We hope that students, by being better informed, will view third world students in another light and the misconceptions that they had about us will vanish. Thirdly, the Page will establish the Third World Community as an integral part of the Mount Holyoke Community.” – Lynn Reid ‘80, “Third World Students Speak for Themselves” Choragos, Volume 14, Number 1, September 13, 1979.
Click on the images below to learn more about publications that expressed the Black experience at Mount Holyoke.
