Introduction
Though African American women made up a small percentage of University of Iowa students from 1910 to 1960, their personal and collective experiences speak volumes on the cultural climate of the University and the Iowa City community. The formation of an off-campus boarding house for African American women in 1919, the integration of the University dormitories in 1946, and the election of the first African American Miss University of Iowa in 1955 are events that both highlight the achievements of African American women and illustrate the state of race relations on campus at the time.
Little documentation exists regarding the experiences of African-American women at the University of Iowa, but efforts by the Iowa Women's Archives and scholars such as Dr. Richard M. Breaux and Dr. Madgetta Thornton Dungy (see "About the Collection") have uncovered a small but diverse collection of primary sources. This digital collection brings together a selection of artifacts from a variety of repositories including the Iowa Women's Archives, the University of Iowa Archives, the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa.