CAMPUS PRIDE LGBT HISTORY: Did You Know? |

Who is Mary Emma Woolley?

from Michael Bronski, Author of A Queer History in the United States

"Oh! My dear little girl, do you not know, can you not understand, that you do just as much for me as I can possibly do for you? I want to be what you think I am, Jeannette - The fact that I love you makes me wish to be more in the world."

This letter written in April of 1900, by Mary Emma Woolley, who would soon be appointed President of Mount Holyoke College, to her lover Jeannette Marks, who would soon join the college’s English faculty, is indicative not only of the passion between the women, but hints at a certain modesty on Woolley’s part. She was without question – more than most women of her time – very much “in the world.” Indeed, not only was Woolley a prominent scholar and an administrator as well as a renowned public figure, but three decades later, in 1931, Good Housekeeping named her – along with feminist activists Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams – "one of the twelve greatest living women in America." Along with being at the forefront of American education – and specifically in creating new, and groundbreaking opportunities for women – Woolley was also deeply involved in social justice movements in the United States and around the world.

Mary Emma Woolley, nicknamed May, was born in 1863, in Connecticut, the daughter of a minister and school teacher. From them she inherited her love of education, her ideas about social justice, and her pacifism – her father ministered to factory workers and had fought in the Civil and the Spanish American wars. She attended classes at what was to become Wheaton College, and after a trip to England wanted to enroll in Oxford or Cambridge. But her intelligence was so great that she was enlisted by the president of Brown University to study there – she specialized in Biblical studies – and in 1894 become the first woman to take a degree from the institution. The next year she began teaching at Wellesley College and quickly rose to the rank of full professor. Soon after she arrived at Wellesley Woolley met, and become emotionally involved with Jeannette Marks, who was younger than her by twelve years, and her student. (Apparently “meeting cute” in late 19th century Wellesley took place in a required Freshman course in Biblical literature.) Marks was a brilliant scholar – the daughter of a Yale professor who also engineered bringing electricity to Philadelphia – and she and Woolley quickly become companions.

Woolley’s reputation as an administrator grew and in 1899 Brown University offered her the position as head of their new women’s college. Simultaneously Mount Holyoke – the nation’s oldest women’s college – offered her the Presidency which she quickly accepted. The thought of separation from Marks was unbearable and she wrote her, after taking the position:

I cannot grow reconciled to the thought of being away from you. Even a day or two is hard... Dearest, my dearest, it is hard not to have your good night kiss.. God in His providence has given me this love when I most need it, when I am about to take up crushing responsibilities... Do you realize what it means to have you, the heart of my life, to talk with you as I would with my own soul, to have nothing hid, to feel that we are one?

Jeannette Marks, having just recently graduated, was offered a position in Mount Holyoke’s English department shortly after. Their life there together was both an open secret and a source of gossip. (Close women’s friendships at the time were accepted, but were increasingly considered “unnatural” as the popular discourse pathologized them as “deviant.”) Despite problems – Marks took a year off to quell disgruntled speculation about her relationship with Woolley and even wrote, although never published, an article condemning “unwise college friendships” – both women thrived at Mount Holyoke. Under Woolley’s careful guardianship the college thrived: its endowment grew from 500,000 to five million, graduate schools were founded, sixteen new buildings were built, the faculty doubled in size, and fellowships for faculty research were instigated. Jeannette Marks in time became the head of the Mount Holyoke English department published 52 books on English literature and theater as well as stories, poems, and plays.

In addition to her work in women’s education Marry Woolley was acclaimed for her social justice work. She worked tirelessly for women’s suffrage, advocated for women to partake in national and local politics, supported educational reform, labor reform, advancement in child care, and lobbied for the United States to join the League of Nations. She was deeply involved – along with such prominent women as Jeannette Rankin, Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Helen Keller – in the American Civil Liberties Union, and in the 1920s was a strong defender of Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian anarchists accused of bank robbery and murder. She was respected by, and worked with Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, who, in 1932, appointed her a delegate to the international Conference on Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, which met in Geneva, Switzerland.

Woolley remained as President of Mount Holyoke until 1937, at the age of 74. Sh died in 1947, active in politics and social reform until a stroke in 1944 at the home she shared with Jeannette Marks in Westport Connecticut. The two women had spent 52 years together. Marks published The Life and Letters of Mary Emma Woolley in 1955, and died nine years later.