Jeannette Dora Black, class of 1930

Abstract

In this interview, Jeannette Dora Black discusses her family, her education at Providence’s Classical High School, and her reasons for attending Pembroke College. She remembers her requirements and classes at Pembroke, her feelings about coeducation, the Pembroke administration, and Dean Margaret Shove Morriss. Black recalls working at the John Hay Library and the effects of the stock market crash of 1929 and World War II on Pembroke. She describes her life after college, including her graduate studies at Radcliffe, working at the John Carter Brown Library, and ethnic, racial, and sexual discrimination she identified at Brown.

Part 1

Part 2

Transcript

Recorded on November 22, 1982 in Providence, RI
Interviewed by Naomi Hurowitz

Suggested Chicago style citation: Black, Jeannette Dora. Interview. By Naomi Hurowitz. Pembroke Center Oral History Project, Brown University. November 22, 1982.

Biography

Jeanette Dora Black graduated from Pembroke College with an A.B. in Political Science in 1930 and received the Anne Crosby Emery Alumnae Felowship to continue her studies at Radcliffe College. Following graduate school, she worked for the World Peace Organization in Boston and New York City before returning to Providence in 1937 to work at the John Carter Brown Library. Black edited and produced the commentary for the two-volume Blathwayt Atlas of 17th century English colonial maps published by Brown University Press. She retired from the Library in 1974. Black passed away on February 28, 1993. The John Carter Brown Library offers the Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship for research in cartography in her honor.