Mardi Gras in New Orleans – there is nothing like it! No matter where we live, we can’t help but share in the excitement - we are all there in spirit. But as the city winds down from the celebration of the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, TFoNC is ramping up for another momentous event. On March 4th, 10:00 a.m., the Louisiana Court of Appeal will hear oral argument in the appeal of Montgomery v. Tulane, the case to save Newcomb College. Make your plans now to BE THERE! Details to follow.
RAISING OUR VOICES: A MESSAGE FROM FACEBOOK
Add your voice to the chorus to Save Newcomb. Join the Save Newcomb group on
Facebook and on
Twitter . We need to hear from you.
Recently, a Newcomb alumna wrote a Facebook entry in reply to someone asking why Newcomb alumnae were still devastated and vocal about the closure of Newcomb College. Her message, condensed here, is worth repeating:
“Many in the Newcomb College community, whether Newcomb alumnae, supporters or employees, are grieving the loss of a sacred, special, unique, and irreplaceable institution that was the first degree-granting women’s coordinate college within a university in the USA; paved the way for women to excel in the world beyond Newcomb in graduate academic atmospheres and in their chosen careers; and was founded at a time when women did not yet have the right to vote in this and most other countries, by a mother (Josephine Louise Newcomb) in honor of her daughter (Sophie), a young woman who died at the age of 15, too early in life to be able to fully develop her own education, life purpose and legacy.
“Newcomb College was the hub of the women’s academic wheel at Tulane with a multitude of spokes, including Newcomb Pottery, Newcomb Dance, Newcomb Arts, Newcomb Music, Newcomb Theater, Newcomb Sports, Newcomb Senate, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, Newcomb Nursery School, and Tulane Junior Year Abroad Program, which was run by women and housed in Newcomb Hall. For nearly 120 years the college provided tens of thousands of women from around the world not simply academic infrastructure but also respect, inclusion, embrace, recognition, tradition, culture, innovation, safety, and celebration of womanhood. These women continue to profoundly grieve the loss of their Newcomb ‘Mother’ that stood for so long alongside their Tulane ‘Father’ within the Tulane University family.
“The history of Newcomb College may seem only to apply to women from long ago. However, a look at the reality of women’s lives in Louisiana and around the world proves that the benefits of Newcomb College are needed as much as ever. Women still earn 66 cents to the male dollar in Louisiana and 77 cents to the male dollar nationally. (This rate often is considerably lower for further marginalized female populations.) Research shows that women who have access to woman-centric education and classroom atmospheres–not to the exclusion of co-ed experiences but in addition to them–maintain increased self-esteem, higher performance rates, greater successes in class group-work, stronger class participation, more personal empowerment, and report feeling safer and happier in their college experiences overall. As a Newcomb Women’s Studies alumna, I understand first-hand, not only psychologically but also academically, statistically and clinically, how women, both on and off-campus, whether student or staff, are being affected by the closing of Newcomb.
“At this time, we cannot afford to lose ANY resources for women anywhere in the world. We simply don’t have enough to spare. The reinstatement of Newcomb College is a reinvestment–not only in the lifelong literary and practical education for women that Josephine Louise Newcomb desired, mandated, and trusted that Tulane would provide its female students specifically through a degree-granting college for women in perpetuity–but also in the education and prosperity of women worldwide.”
Jennifer A. Sachs, N ‘94
For full response, please visit http://newcombgals.blogspot.com
WHO WAS JOSEPHINE LOUISE NEWCOMB?
Most of us know little about Josephine Louise Newcomb beyond her founding Newcomb College. Here we begin a serialized timeline of her life.Josephine Louise Le Monnier was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 31, 1816. Following the death of her mother in April of 1837, Josephine Louise, then 21 years old, moved to New Orleans with her father and older brother, presumably to be near her older sister, Eleanor (Mrs. William Henderson).
On December 15, 1845, at Christ Church in New Orleans, Josephine Louise married Warren Newcomb, a native of Bernardston, Massachusetts, who often traveled to New Orleans on business from Louisville, Kentucky.
By 1850 the couple was living in Louisville where Warren Newcomb and two of his brothers, Horatio Dalton and Hezekiah, were prosperous wholesale grocers.
The couple apparently moved about, living for a time in New York. It was there that Josephine Louise, at the age of 39, gave birth to daughter Harriott Sophie Newcomb on July 29, 1855. (A son was born two years earlier but lived for only one day.) Subsequently Warren, Josephine Louise, and Sophie returned to Louisville to live.
In 1862, Warren retired from the grocery business, and the family moved back to New York, possibly because Warren’s Northern origins made life in Louisville uncomfortable during the Civil War years. The Newcombs took up residence at Hoffman House, a hotel in Manhattan, where Warren died on August 26, 1866, after an illness of several months.
After Warren’s death Josephine Louise devoted all her attention to her daughter, and the two were inseparable. Except for one school year that they spent in Baltimore, Josephine Louise and Sophie continued to reside in New York where, tragically, Sophie died of diphtheria at age 15, in 1870.
To be continued.
CONTINUE THE LEGACY
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