ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG
SOURCE: Associated Press
MINNIE BRAITHWAITE tried to attend chemistry lectures and wasn't allowed to. Now, they're starting a lecture series in her name. College of William and Mary faculty meeting and asked for permission to sit in on chemistry lectures.
The professors turned her down 4-3, minutes of the Oct. 2, 1896, meeting show. A week later, after Braithwaite appealed, a more sweeping resolution to allow women in general into science lectures also was defeated.
On Saturday, Braithwaite's name will resurface in the history of the college, the nation's second oldest after Harvard University. Professors and school officials will gather in the Blue Room of the Sir Christopher Wren Building - the room where Braithwaite's petition was voted down - to launch the inaugural Minnie Braithwaite Lecture in Women's Studies.
``She was a pioneer at William and Mary and beyond,'' Terry Meyers, chairman of the school's English Department, said of Braithwaite. ``It bothered me we hadn't done anything to acknowledge that.''
This summer, Meyers exchanged letters with Braithwaite's daughter, Dorothy Jenkins Ross of Live Oak, Calif., to gather materials on her and make plans for a permanent endowment for the lecture series.
Braithwaite was born in 1874 in Williamsburg, one of 13 children. She began teaching her younger sisters at age 14 and soon had a private school operating out of her home.
But William and Mary shut the door when she tried to gain admittance because ``I was a girl,'' she wrote in a 1951 autobiography, ``Girl From Williamsburg.''
So she tried the next best thing: sitting in on lectures as an observer. In February 1896, the Faculty Assembly had approved a resolution allowing women to attend lectures on Shakespeare.
But chemistry was a different story, even though Braithwaite had the support of Lyon Tyler, then president of the college.
``I had many disappointments,'' Braithwaite wrote. ``Dutiful daughters weren't ever supposed to be so independent.''
She eventually went to Arizona and became a teacher in the Indian Service. She died in 1954.
Women were admitted to the college in 1918.
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