Overview:
Members of the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College gathered at Silver Lake Cemetery in Athol on April 25 to celebrate the founders of Spelman College, Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard, who founded the Black women's liberal arts college was founded in 1881. The event included a wreath laying at the gravesite of Giles and Packard, and a guest speaker who spoke of Spelman as being more than just a college and of the NAASC being more than just an alumnae association, but rather, a sisterhood.
ATHOL – Members of the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College (NAASC) gathered at Silver Lake Cemetery in Athol Saturday morning to celebrate the founders of the women’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia.
Claudia Rosa, representing the Boston Chapter of the NAASC, told the Athol Daily News, “We celebrate our founders every year very, very intentionally and very, very purposefully. This is kind of a no-brainer for us to do this. We celebrate our founders at Spelman with all the love and all the admiration we can; just reflecting on the courage at that time of these two women.
“I know the strength it took,” Rosa continued, “and the tenacity it took for them to say, ‘We’re doing this and we’re going to succeed.’ So, I think it’s very important.”
Spelman, among the most respected historically Black colleges and universities in the country, was founded on April 11, 1881, by Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard. Both women were born in New Salem.
The pair traveled to Atlanta to establish a school to educate women among the recently freed enslaved people. After finding little support for their cause in the North Quabbin area, Giles and Packard were given $100 by the First Baptist Church of Medford to pursue their mission. The school was eventually established in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta.
Rosa explained that Saturday’s wreath laying at the graves of Giles and Packard culminates the association’s commemoration of the two founders.
“We celebrate all month, actually,” she said. “It’s a big celebration all over America, other chapters – LA, New York, all over.”
Those leading the procession of Spelman alumnae carried pictures of the founders, along with a wreath which was laid at the gravesite.
“We are so pleased to be able once again to commemorate this event at the site of the final resting place of Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles,” said Keva Wright Berry, immediate past president of the NAASC. “These two women had a vision to educate women at Spelman College, the number one HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) for 19 consecutive years. Since its founding in 1881…Spelman College has been the premier institution for education of the women of the African diaspora. We rejoice that we have been the beneficiaries of Miss Packard’s and Miss Giles’ profound and bold vision.”
The guest speaker for the event was Janet Darden Gipson, who graduated Spelman in 1992. She leads talent acquisition at Yale University and is the founder of Absoulutely Balanced, an executive coaching and “somatic movement practice.”
Gipson spoke of Spelman as being more than just a college and of the NAASC being more than just an alumnae association. Those who have attended the school, as well as those who are association members, she explained, make up a sisterhood. Having two sisters – one six years older and the other eight years older – Gipson said she missed out on the experience of having a sister of a similar age and that she felt like an only child.
Her mother, she said, “Knew something was up with her daughter that I don’t think she fully understood or that I fully understood until I was grown. She knew the sisterhood I was missing inside of our home, she could help me build it outside….Girls Scouts, church youth groups, summer camp, pre-school plays, middle school play, high school plays; the list goes on. Every one of those experiences was my mother’s way of saying, ‘You were not meant to live this life alone.’”
Gipson said she learned that sisterhood “requires presence, the willingness to keep showing up, and it requires you to let yourself be chosen by people who didn’t have to choose you, but they chose you anyway. Sometimes community is not something that happens to you, it’s something you walk into again and again until you look up one day and you realize, ‘I’m not alone in this world.’”
Spelman, she said, had given her a wonderful community of sisters with whom she had many shared experiences, resulting in both laughter and tears. Spelman, she said, had helped mold her and her fellow alumnae into the women they are today; living separate lives but still members of a close-knit sisterhood.