Douglass Research: Finding Veronica Henriksen

an exhibit by Miya Carey

Research for the book Scarlet and Black, Volume 2: Constructing Race and Gender at Rutgers, 1865-1945 expanded beyond Rutgers College to include the New Jersey College for Women (NJC). Established in 1918 as a premier women’s college in New Jersey, NJC (which later became Douglass College) did not admit its first African American student, Julia Baxter Bates, until 1934. Keeping in line with the goals of the Scarlet and Black Project, my fellow researcher Pamela Walker and I were tasked with identifying and narrating the lives of women at the margins: African American women, non-black women of color, and Jewish women who had attended NJC. The book's fourth chapter, “Profiles in Courage: Breaking the Color Line at Douglass College,” presents the results of our research. This exhibit explains our research process as we dug into the archive to uncover the story of Veronica Henriksen, NJC class of 1944.

Throughout this exhibit, you will see images of archival items and newspaper headlines. Click any image to learn more about the documents and access the full text of newspaper articles.

1942-11-02-Courier-News-p10-headline.jpg

Courier-News, November 2, 1942

Introduction