TIMELINE

1715  Elizabeth Elstob publishes The Rudiments of Grammar, the first Anglo-Saxon grammar.

1760  The Moor’s Charity School for Indians was established.

1770  Phillis Wheatley publishes her first poem.

1780  Kenneth Lockridge estimates that the the literacy rate of New England women was half that of men’s. 

1787  Young Ladies Academy opens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1792  Sarah Pierce opens a school in her home with one student.  By 1816 she had taught 157 girls. 

1792  Judith Sargent Murray published On the Equality of the Sexes. 

1819  Emma Willard writes her “plan for Improving Female Education”  which although           unsuccessful, defines the issue of women’s education at the time.

1821  Emma Willard opened Troy Female Seminary in NY.

1823  Catherine Beecher opened a school for girls in Hartford, Connecticut.

1824  Mary Lyon opened her own school.

1826  First public high schools for girls opened in NY and Boston.

1833  Prudence Crandall opened the first private boarding school for black girls in New England.

1833  Oberlin College, in Ohio, is the first co-educational college in the world.

1838  Mount Holyoke college is established in Massachusetts as the first college for women.

1848  Seneca Falls Convention

1849  Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the world to receive a medical degree.

1850  The Female (later women’s) Medical college was founded in Pennsylvania.
 
1850  Harriet Bishop, St. Paul, Minnesota’s first school teacher opened a Female Seminary.

1850  First Federal census to measure literacy reports little difference between the number of men and women in the Northeast who can read and write. 

1852  Catherine Esther Beecher founded the American Woman’s Educational Association.

1852  Mary Atkins opens the Young Ladies Seminary at Benicia (later Mills college).

1858  Mary Fellows is the first woman west of the Mississippi River to receive a baccalaureate degree. 

1862  Mary Jane Patterson became the first African-American woman to get her bachelor’s degree.

1865  Vassar college opened.

1868  The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was opened to educate African Americans.

1870  Upon her death, Sophia Smith left $393,000 to fund the opening of Smith college.

1870  The average female teacher earned $12 a week, while male teachers earned an average of $35 a week. 

1871  Harriette J. Cooke becomes the first woman college professor in the United States appointed full professor with a salary equal to her male peers. 

1873  Ellen Swallow Richards becomes the first woman to receive a B.S. from MIT.

1875  Smith college opened.

1875  Wellesley opened.

1877  Helen Magill became the first woman in the United States to earn her Ph.D.

1878  The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute began admitting Native Americans.

1881  The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary (later Spelman College) opened.

1885  The Ramona School for Indian Girls opened in Santa Fe.

1885  Bryn Mawr opened.

1886  Montgomery Industrial School for Girls was opened by Alice White.

1889  Barnard college opens.

1889  Jane Addams and Ellen Star open Hull House, one of the United States first settlement houses. 

1892  Laura J. Eisenhuth was the first woman elected to state office as Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

1897  National Congress of mothers formed (now PTA).

1898  Emma M. Gillet and Ellen Spencer Mussey open the Washington College of Law.
 
1901  Margaret Haley becomes the first woman and first teacher to speak from the floor at a meeting of the National Education Association. 

1903  Mother Jones leads a demonstration, saying that working children belong in schools.

1904  Margaret Haley calls for teachers to organize.

1904  Helen Keller becomes the first blind-deaf person to graduate from college.

1904  Mary McLeod Bethune opens Daytona School for Negro Girls.

1909  Ella Flagg Young became the first female superintendent of a large city school system.

1910  Women made up 39% of college undergraduates and 20% of college faculty.

1910  The Education of Women was published, written by Marion Talbot, the dean of women at Chicago.

1911  In The Child and the State, Margaret McMillan argues that schools discriminate against working class children.

1918  Beatrice Chambers founded a progressive school for girls named Maltman’s Green.

1921  The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers opened.

1921  The Deans of Girls in Chicago High Schools published Manners and Conduct in Sschools and Out.

1925  Zora Neale Hurston is the first African American woman to be admitted to Barnard college.

1936  Maria Montessori published The Secret of Childhood.

1941 Several pieces of legislation passed which put an end to the marriage bars that prevented married women from teaching.

1945  The first class of women is admitted  to Harvard Medical School.

1948  Education was proclaimed a human right in Article 26 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1954  Brown v Board of Education

1965  Affirmative Action became law in the U.S.

1965  Higher Education Act is passed in the U.S.

1972  Title IX  passed.

1973  Sexism in Sschool and Society, by Nancy Frazier and Myra Sadker, was published.

1980  Mary Swanson started AVID program in high schools.

1980  Women make up 51% of college students. 

1996  Virginia military institute was forced by the Supreme court to admit women.