'24 '31 Students Study Race
Content warning: this site and its primary sources include early 20th-century terminology for race and other material that may cause harm.
This exhibition highlights two conferences on race that Bryn Mawr students co-organized in the early twentieth century. The 1924 conference was a three-day event co-organized by students at Bryn Mawr College, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania and held in the town of Swarthmore. Students—black and white, male and female—from other institutions attended, exchanged ideas, and socialized with one another. The 1931 conference was a one-day event organized by Bryn Mawr students and held on Bryn Mawr’s campus. It featured many prominent speakers of color, including Walter White, head of the NAACP; Alice Dunbar Nelson, poet and member of the Interracial Committee of the Society of Friends; and W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis.