Merze Tate

• In Event: 16.028 - "Outrageous, Audacious, Courageous": Writing "Womanist" Biography in Education

Abstract

Merze Tate was the first Black Woman to earn a degree from Oxford University, (International Relations, 1935) and the first Black Woman to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in the fields of government and international relations in 1941. She joined the faculty at Howard University in 1942, as one of two women ever hired in the history department. She remained on the faculty until her retirement in 1977. Tate is significant not only for her academic accomplishments and her advocacy on behalf of women, but also as one of the earliest tenured women faculty members at Howard.

Dr. Tate’s educational history is captured using historical methods with a Black feminist perspective, specifically utilizing the concept of intersectionality. Primary data sources used to develop this paper includes oral histories and the Papers of Rayford Logan at the Library of Congress and Merze Tate at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University. Howard University was the preeminent Black university and much has been written on the stellar Black male faculty of the institution. However, this is an incomplete story since there was an equally stellar black female faculty that has never been highlighted or discussed in existing histories. This paper will provide evidence of the key role these women played on Howard’s faculty. Additionally, Merze Tate’s history provides new knowledge on the important role of Black Women faculty at an elite historically Black university.

Author

• Linda M. Perkins, Claremont Graduate University