Dragging Currier Hall into the 20th century: first blacks to live in UI residence hall recall 1946 feat
Courtesy of Iowa Women's Archive/The Ester J. Walls Collection Back row, left to right, Leanna Howard, Ester J. Walls, Nancy Henry, Patricia Ray (visitor). Front row left to right, Gwen Davis, Virginia Harper. Dragging Currier Hall into the 20th century First blacks to live in UI residence hall recall 1946 feat BY BRANDON CAMPBELL THE DAILY iOWAN During a time when race issues were escalating and the country was divided by segrega¬ tion, freshman Virginia Harper received the key to her room at N35 Currier Hall. The event opened the doors to equality for black women at the UI. Harper, along with Gwen Davis, Nancy Henry, Leanna Howard, and Ester Walls, offi¬ cially desegregated Currier Hall in 1946. "It seemed to be something so normal that should've hap¬ pened," said Walls, a native of Mason City. Walls, 76, became the first black woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and she gradu¬ ated summa cum laude from the UI with a B.A. in French and a minor in education in 1948. "I had a right to be in Currier Hall," she said. "Why not? I was the valedictorian of my high school class, and I was from the state of Iowa." According to 1933 UI gradu¬ ate Herbert Jenkins' thesis, early UI officials argued that prejudiced whites would object to having black students living near other white students. Before integration of the dorms, local black residents housed black students in their homes. Some black students lived with white faculty mem¬ bers, performing housework to help fund their education, Jenk¬ ins wrote. After World War II, the uni¬ versity was hit financially by the aftershocks of the war. To fill financial holes due to a lack of students in the dorms, uni¬ versity officials allowed black students from Iowa to live in the residence halls. "I remember my father say¬ ing to me, "You are sta3ring in Currier because I pay taxes,' " said Davis, a Des Moines native See currier, Page 5A