This essay will examine how Christianity and Christian spaces within Davidson College’s history have impacted the experiences of queer students at Davidson.
These oral histories make clear that throughout Davidson’s history as an educational institution, gender, racial, and sexual identities have impacted students’ abilities to gain social status and acceptance.
Jim Pepper’s oral history interview, conducted by Davidson College students in May of 2021, highlights the tensions and convergence between the values he gained at Davidson and his HIV/AIDS activism in New York City.
On April 13th, 1984, Janet Stovall and Stone Bynum, student members and leaders in the Black Student Coalition at Davidson College edited and published a summarized list of demands, curated in a recent BSC meeting, and directed at the institution. Their proposal, entitled “Project ‘87,” listed action items the college needed to take immediately “if ... Interviews with Gardner Roller Ligo, a transfer student during the 1971-1972 school year; Dr. Vicki Switzer, class of 1974 and the first woman to officially enroll; and Cissi Lyles, class of 1979, provide powerful testimonies of their experiences as some of the first degree-seeking women at Davidson College.
By explaining how Black Davidson students have pushed this predominantly white institution and its community members to interrogate the manifestations and histories of anti-Blackness in and around Davidson, this essay centers student leadership as a driving force for change.
In this essay, we examine the intersections between Davidson’s emphasis on “humane instincts” associated with Presbyterian values and the presence (and, sometimes, lack thereof) of queer community members in the college’s official histories.
By analyzing the actions of queer Davidson students advocating for equity, inclusion, and visibility, we can critically evaluate how queer students have been remembered and preserved in the college archives.
“Through teaching music, white women in nineteenth Davidson were able to leverage the expectations of domesticity and motherhood that once confined them in order to enter the once all-male professional world of compensated labor.”
“As the first ladies of Davidson College, the Morrison women provide a fascinating view into the lives of upper-class women in Antebellum Davidson.”
“The documentary record represents a patriarchal image of the history of the Helper business, crediting Helper for his success without mentioning the vital labor of Helper women.”
“Whether through claiming sexuality and agency by attending dance parties or undermining the institution of slavery, deviant women of the nineteenth-century South pushed the boundaries of their ascribed gendered and racial roles, reclaiming their bodies as their own even under profound oppression.”
“While women were barred from formal power in sacred and professional settings, the unique role religion played in the lives of nineteenth-century Davidsonians enabled white women to take on leadership positions in the church while leaving the gendered and racialized hierarchies of power in their communities untouched.”
“An analysis of free white women’s relationships with enslaved Black women in their households can provide insights into gender, race, and power in early Davidson.”
“The nuanced labor, daily resistance, and presence of enslaved women in the Antebellum South invalidate and expose the white supremacist basis of official histories of Davidson which seek to erase the presence of enslaved women and the violent histories of Davidson they reveal.”
” By investigating the history of food preparation in Davidson, one can draw conclusions about how Davidson’s story fits into larger narratives of food, family, and power in the Antebellum South.”
Queer Christianity at Davidson College From the 1980s to the Present
Sexual Cultures, Social Hierarchies, and Narrated Experiences at Davidson College
“You gotta be present, you have to be visible, and you have to be inconvenient”: An Oral History Interview with James G. Pepper ‘65
Project ‘87 and Establishing the Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Concerns
“Not Serious Students”: Microaggressions and the Transition to Coeducation At Davidson College
The BSC’s Statement of Protest and the Old South Ball
Presbyterian Heritage and Queerness
Queerness and Visibility
School to Recital: Women Teaching Music
First Ladies: The Women of the Morrison Family
The Helper Hotel: Women’s Labor in Early Davidson
Dancing, Deviance, and Daily Resistance
Women of the Ladies Missionary Society
“She is a Hard Old Case”: Slave Owning Davidsonian Women
Enslaved Women in Antebellum Davidson
Who’s in the Kitchen?: Gender & Culinary Labor