Conference

The Tracing Race at ISU Initiative: Community Support for Black Students at Iowa State before 1950

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Abstract

The Tracing Race at ISU initiative is an ongoing effort to encourage, support, and facilitate digital scholarship projects that engage with the history of race, inequality, racism and student, faculty, and staff activism at Iowa State University.

This lecture presents findings from the Tracing Race project "The Black ISC Student Experience to 1950," which foregrounds the inspiring stories of over 100 Black students who attended Iowa State College (ISC). These students represent 41 majors and received degrees at all levels of instruction, from Bachelor of Science to Doctor of Philosophy, along with various certificates and graduate credit in summer school courses. An unwritten Iowa State College policy kept these aspiring educators, engineers, veterinarians, and homemakers from living on campus. They were compelled to find housing in homes and rental properties around town. This session will explore where these students lived, who supported them during their time in Ames, and how they connected with the local African American community. This social support system helped make their time at Iowa State the full, enriching college experience that all Iowa State students deserve and buoyed them up when challenges in their academic and personal lives threatened to drag them down.