Preferred Citation

MSS 16847, Howard University student diary, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was purchased from Langdon Manor by the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 23 February 2024.

Biographical / Historical

The diary belongs to an unidentified African American female student at Howard University in 1915. She writes about her friend or possibly boyfriend, Jesse S. Heslip, who later becomes an attorney and the president   of the National Bar Association.

(The National Bar Association was founded in 1925 and is the nation's oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges. It represents the interests of approximately 65,000 lawyers, judges, law professors and law students.The NBA is organized around 23 substantive law sections, 9 divisions, 12 regions and 80 affiliate chapters throughout the United States and around the world.The objectives of the National Bar Association "…shall be to advance the science of jurisprudence; improve the administration of justice; preserve the independence of the judiciary and to uphold the honor and integrity of the legal profession; to promote professional and social intercourse among the members of the American and the international bars; to promote legislation that will improve the economic condition of all American citizens, regardless of race, sex or creed in their efforts to secure a free and untrammeled use of the franchise guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States; and to protect the civil and political rights of the citizens and residents of the United States.")

The handwritten diary entries also describe her activities at Howard University and her admiration for Jesse Heslip ("Jess Hess")

Sources: National Bar Association website. Accessed 7/12/2024. https://members.nationalbar.org/NBAR/NBAR/content/about.aspx

Content Description

This collection contains a diary from an unknown female student attending Howard University in 1915. It measures 9 X 6 inches, and the pages are hole-punched and tied with a ribbon. The diary includes one tipped-in item and twenty-eight leaves with thirty-three of the pages written on. Most of the diary documents the last few days of May 1915, covering the writer's final days at Howard and reminiscing about her time at the university.

She discusses attending the annual play by Howard's dramatic club, a version of "The Merchant of Venice," watching a tennis tournament, dancing, and going to nightclubs where her friends would sing and play music. She also discusses her classes and preparing for exams.

The diary mentions "Mary Terrell" more than once, but her interactions were not with Mary Church Terrell, the civil rights activist and journalist, but with a niece who shared the same first and last name. 

The diarist mentions her friendship and admiration of Jesse S. Heslip, sometimes called " Jess Hess" in the diary. The writer describes letters and times they shared, such as going to Capitol Hill to hear Congressman Martin Madden speak. Laid into the diary is ephemera announcing "Why Some Are Voting For Heslip." Heslip, who, after graduating from Howard in 1917, would serve on the national legal committee of the NAACP, become president of the National Black Bar Association and petition Congress to establish training camps for Black soldiers at the onset of the Second World War. Later entries in the diary (June-August 1915) place the writer in Brooklyn, New York.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• African American students
• African American women
• Howard University
• Langdon Manor Books
• diaries