One thing we know beyond doubt and that is that certain races have never yet in the history of the world manifested any continuous mental activity nor even any continuous power of organized government. Such are the pure negroes of Africa, the Indians, the Esquimaux, the South Sea Islanders, the Turks, etc. Our own semi-civilized American negroes have shown in Haiti what they revert to when left to themselves. Even a people of genuine intellectual power like the Poles seem to have a fatal instability and infirmity of purpose that prevents steadfast organization.
Bryn Mawr Alumnae Quarterly – Address by President Thomas at the Opening of the College, October 4, 1916.
M. Carey Thomas WAS Bryn Mawr College
In March of 2023, Bryn Mawr announced that they will be scraping away the engraving of M.Carey Thomas’ name from the front of the library named for her in 1935.
That’s quite different than what they were saying in 2018.
The Board has decided to leave Thomas’ name inscribed on the building façade but to use the names “The Old Library” and “The Great Hall” – the original names of the building and hall, modified slightly – in the daily life of the College. In keeping with this decision, all awards bearing Thomas’ name will be called “The Bryn Mawr College” prize or award, while the published description of those prizes and awards will include the history of the name, to reflect the layering of our history.
In leaving M. Carey Thomas’ name on the building and not renaming it in another person’s honor, we will continue to value President Thomas’ many remarkable contributions to the College. The inscription also reminds us to confront all aspects of Thomas’ legacy and to tell our full history. We recognize that for many the building will always be “Thomas” – indeed, that is a part of our history and part of the lives of many of our alumnae/i. We ask the College also to find ways to communicate a fuller history of M. Carey Thomas’ life and support ongoing reflection. We need to preserve and engage with this history and build it into the education we provide. We hope, moreover, that this decision will offer opportunities to understand and share many other histories.
March, 2023 – The Board of Trustees Reverses Its Decision. Thomas’s name will be removed.
We have concluded that the fraught legacy of M. Carey Thomas continues to impede our progress in becoming the community we aspire to be. Even as M. Carey Thomas was steadfast in her drive to build a first-rate academic institution for the education of women, the limitation of her vision to the education of wealthy white women, her embrace of eugenics, and her outspoken racist and antisemitic beliefs have caused pain for generations of students, staff and faculty. We believe that Thomas’ social beliefs are irreconcilably in conflict with Bryn Mawr’s mission, values and aspirations today. The inscription over the Old Library entrance, initially intended to honor Thomas’ contributions, now sends an unwelcoming message too powerfully placed to be offset or clarified by countering narratives elsewhere. Accordingly, we have approved the removal of the inscription and its preservation in the Bryn Mawr archives. Removal of the inscription will reinstate Old Library as it was originally built in 1907.
“The Bryn Mawr Community” knew about the dark side of their former president long before 2018.
In September 1994, the Inquirer’s Tim Warren reviewed Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s definitive biography, “The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas.” Warren wrote – Thomas’ documented antisemitism and racism raise the question of how someone should be judged by late 20th-century standards.
Among the middle and upper classes of the 19th and 20th centuries, a certain genteel racism was tolerated, even expected (Baltimoreans will recall the furor over entries in H.L. Mencken’s diaries). But even in that context, some of Thomas’ statements and actions will test her admirers …
Dr. Horowitz acknowledged being “really disgusted” by one of Thomas’ most famous public statements. That was her chapel talk to Bryn Mawr College students in 1916, in which Thomas disparaged the intelligence of practically every ethnic group except Northern Europeans and the British. She also noted the influx into America of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, warning against “the lowering of the physical and mental inheritance of a nation by intermixture of unprogressive millions of backward peoples.”
Despite the revelations in Horowitz’s book, Thomas’ skeleton remained solidly ensconced in Bryn Mawr’s closet until August of 2017, when College President Kimberly Wright Cassidy declared a moratorium on the use of the Thomas name at “The Great Hall” and the “Thomas Library.”
Helen Horowitz believes Bryn Mawr College Should NOT Expunge the name and memory of Carey Thomas. In an email she wrote –
I urge the college not to remove a name, but use that name as a teaching moment to discuss issues, such as discrimination and quotas that have been connected to the history of Bryn Mawr. I also add that the college community might examine in what ways these issues might still exist, although perhaps in different forms. M. Carey Thomas’prejudices do not negate the many good things that she did during her presidency. She made excellent hires in choosing the first faculty and insisted on high standards for female higher education. She was a founder of the Johns Hopkins medical school and the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, a leader in the women’s suffrage movement, and the preeminent spokeswoman for higher education at the turn of the century.