For Miss Dee, getting admitted to the University of Alabama in 1898 was not just a matter of completing her work at Alabama Normal School, getting the necessary forms and applying for admission to the University. She was a member of first class the first female students to be admitted to the University of Alabama with housing on campus. Julia Tutwiler, president of Alabama Normal School in Livingston mounted a campaign that convinced the University to accept women students and to provide on campus housing. Kathryn Tucker Windham has captured the adventuresome spirit of Julia Tutwiler in her one-person play, My Name is Julia.
The play portrays Julia Tutwiler’s efforts to have women admitted to the University. After describing the efforts leading up to the decision to admit women, the actress portraying Julia Tutwiler describes the admission of her students from Livingston, which included Miss Dee. The play presents this dramatic event as follows:
“It was five years later (after the decision to admit women to the University, which occurred in 1893) before any of my Livingston girls attended the University. Lack of proper housing was the hindrance. A few Tuscaloosa girls enrolled in the university each year, but housing for boarding students, women boarding students, was not available. This was an inexcusable impediment.
“So I accosted the University’s president. “You must provide proper on campus housing for the women students,” I told him. “Your men students have dormitories. The same should be available for women.”
“Amazingly, he agreed with me!
“’I promise to provide a house on campus if you can find ten qualified students to live in it,” he told me.’
“Even as he spoke, I was making mental selections of those ten students.
“Back at Livingston, I assembled my faculty and said to them, “We must select ten of our finest students to attend the university next fall. Each girl must excel in academics, must have pleasing manners and must have a reputation above reproach. And she must have parents who will allow her to take part in this educational advance.”
“Selections were carefully, carefully made. When I met in my office with the ten girls who were chosen, I congratulated them, but I warned them. “When you enroll as university students, you may be subjected to insulting remarks and crude jokes. Some of your professors may give you unreasonable assignments, seeking to discourage you.
“You have a heavy responsibility. Unless your achievements and deportment are exemplary, our efforts to open the University of Alabama to women will likely fail. God bless you.”
“In the fall of 1898, my ten girls and their chaperone moved into a two-story residence on Tuscaloosa Avenue near the president’s home. They named that residence for me, Julia Tutwiler Annex.
* * *
“I was more than pleased when, at the end of that first year as university students, my ten girls won 66% of the academic honors.”
Our Miss Dee finished summa cum laude, sharing the honor with a male student.
Although this is merely a dramatic portrayal, intended for the stage, I believe that it captures and accurately describes the spirit of the historical events. And it provides great insight about the kind of person that both Julia Tutwiler and Miss Dee were. As described in the introductory essay in this series, Miss Dee completed the University of Alabama and graduated with the 1901 class.
While at the University, Miss Dee served on the editorial staff of the school newspaper, The Crimson White, in the 1900-1901 school year. The Crimson White was first published in 1894. The following poem entitled The Senior Walk, written by Miss Dee, is found in the November 2nd, 1900, edition of the Crimson White:
Say, have you seen the Senior Walk?
Have not? –then listen while I tell
Of airs that pass beyond expression,
The Senior—Oh he is a “swell”!
He has a golden headed care,
He sways with grace quite bel,
Describing charming airy curves,
The Senior—sure, he is a “swell”!
He never sees the “sophs” and “rats”
That daily cross his path—Oh well,
He holds his head erect, you know,
The Senior who’s so “swell”.
O Senior, proud of step and mien,
It can’t be said that man ne’er fell,
And the “last great day” in June, my friend,
‘Twill not suffice to be a “swell.”
M.C.D.
Of all the writings by Miss Dee and descriptions that I have seen of Miss Dee, this poem is the most like advocacy! She obviously understood the significance of being one of Miss Jule’s Girls in what had been an all-male military school.
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