Activism

Dickinson junior Judy Rogers, after spending the summer in Sierra Leone as part of the Operation Crossroads Africa (OCA) program, shared her experiences with her classmates and local communities. Rogers remarked on the similarities between African cities and American cities, and her own intimate participation in Sierra Leonean culture: students were expected to live as the local people did, eating their food and donning traditional dress when appropriate.

At the close of her sophomore year, Judith Rogers, one of the first African Americans to receive campus housing at Dickinson, had received two distinctions.

The Congress of African Students (CAS) circulated it's first issue of their group's publication, "NIA-PURPOSE."

The Dickinson College Chaplain wrote a letter in October of 1969 (it is unclear to whom, or who this Chaplain is, for the document contains no signature) to offer the presentational services of the most-recently returned Project Africa participants.Dorothy "Dottie" Cole worked with twenty other students in Sierra Leone "building a hospital in the village of Mabai which will, when completed, serve persons from a 50 mile area in that country."

Paul E. Kaylor, Dickinson College's Chaplain at the time, wrote this letter to the Operation Crossroads Africa headquarters in New York City in December of 1967 to endorse Dickinson's two applicants for the year, Dorothy Lynne Cole and Barry Eugene Taylor. Kaylor recommends both students enthusiastically, writing "they are, as the reference forms indicate, young people of the highest order and will [...] prove to be excellent Crossroaders."

Barbara E. Hancock spent about six weeks during the summer of 1967 in Upper Volta, West Africa (present day Burkina Faso) where she lived with African students and helped to build a school. Upon her return to Carlisle, Hancock became Co-Chairman of Project Africa and wrote a letter to the "clergymen of Carlisle Area Churches" in an effort to "refresh [their] memories about Project Africa" and to offer them a presentation where she would show her slides and give a brief talk about her experiences.

OCA (Operation Crossroads Africa) was founded at Dickinson by Judy Rogers, '65. Rogers was the College's first representative in Africa in the summer of 1963. The following summer ('64) three other Dickinson students followed her lead.

Su Kenderdine, a Dickinson senior, spent 11 weeks in Barbour County, Alabama volunteering with SCOPE (Summer Community Organization for Political Education). Kenderdine joined other Northern college students in the South with the goal of helping "Negroes better their lives by arousing an interest in education and government." As part of their work, Kenderdine and other SCOPE volunteers set up schools in counties across the South and tried to "better job opportunities for Southern Negroes."

The Extra Features on the Dickinson College website documents the creation and activism of the Feminist Collective. Formerly the Zatae Longsdorff Center for Women, the Feminist Collective is the new student-led women's feminist organization on campus. The first women's center was created in 1984 as a support and research center, named after the first woman to graduate from Dickinson, Zatae Longsdorff.  With this new center, the members can "now focus on an inclusive agenda that addresses gender, race, class, and sexual orientation" because they are a feminist organization.

In what appears to be a tri-fold pamphlet, distributed by the STOP THE VIOLENCE anonymous group, students, specifically women,  are encouraged to speak out against sexual violence.  The pamphlet poses several thought-provoking arguments, asking the reader if they have noticed that "women's issues are not taken seriously" and why Dickinson "worries more about lawsuits than protecting [women] from rape."  The pamphlet hopes to compel women to "end the silence and stop the violence."

In response to the posters put up by an anonymous student in protest of the Roe v. Wade anniversary posters of the Women's Center, Susannah Bartlow of the Women's Center created this lunch forum sponsered by the Women's Center, Office of Campus Life, Office of the Dean of Students, and Institutional and Diversity Initiatives.

On the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortions the Women's Center placed hangers hung with different phrases around campus to get student attention and make students more aware of the history of being able to choose and make decisions over one's own sexuality and the choice to bear children. This poster says "Don't Like Abortions? Get a Vasectomy."

After seeing posters attached to coat hangers put up by the Women's Center in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, an anonymous student put up a reaction coat hanger with this poster. Some of the Womens Center celebration awareness posters included phrases like "Don't like abortion? Get a vascetomy!" and "Keep your theology off my biology."  The anonymous student wanted to make it known that abortion and other female issues are much more complicated than narrowing them down to religion/politics and other aspects of opinion.

Circa 1984, this constitution for the Equality for Females student organization outlines its mission of creating a community that better understands current feminist issues.

This Progress Reports includes changes and plans to change College policy regarding female students. Most notably is the mention of the 1973 Spring semester and the success of the movements to "rescind the 'sex quota,' by action of the Board of Trustees, so that henceforth Dickinson College will strive for an approximate ratio of 1:1 in admissions of male and female students; and to omit singing at College functions the last verse of the Alma Mater, with its references to 'men' and 'sons.'"

"Personal Adventures in Race Relations" by Esther Popel Shaw (class of1919), Dickinson's first African American female graduate, was published in 1946. It addresses the sources of prejudice and racism, and she urges in her introduction that cooperation is necessary to overcome these detrimental assumptions regarding African Americans. "At a time when all our energies are needed to meet and solve together the crucial problems of the postwar period, we find a large element of the population torn by resentment, suspicion and hatred.

This letter, dated September 5, 1945, was written by Esther Popel Shaw, the first African American female graduate of Dickinson College 1919, to Mr. Boyd Lee Spahr of the Board of Trustees. Writing from her post at the National Association of College Women, Esther Popel Shaw defends herself and her race against Spahr's "apparent lack of awareness of what constitutes acceptable designations when racial references are involved" as well as racial injustice when it comes to college housing for African American students.

On Sunday April 8, 1979, in ATS, the Symbrinct Associates performed Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf."
 
The performance consisted of Seven Black women performing and dancing a book of poems to the sounds of Jazz. "The women speak, and tell stories of pain, of joy, of struggle, of coming of age as a black woman in America. Although the play addresses the emotionality of the black woman, it posseses a universal quality and delivers a message that can be understood and appreciated by all."