Women's History Month 2026

This Women’s History Month, we want to take a moment to remember the bravery of some of the state’s educational female pioneers. While their opportunities were scant, the women who took charge of their roles at academies, colleges and universities across Mississippi showed their dedication to making room for women in education.
                   
 In 1831, Alice M. Robinson and Catherine Hall became the first women to earn degrees from a coeducational institution at Mississippi College. As the century wore on, Clinton continued to be a space for women to make large moves in educational spaces. A nearby private school called Hillman College employed the state’s first female college president, Adelia Hillman, from 1894 until 1896. In 1884, the legislature chartered a new school, the Industrial Institute and College (later the Mississippi University for Women), which was the nation’s first state-supported college for women. That same year, the University of Mississippi hired its first female librarian, Julia Wilcox. Wilcox increased the size of the library to 12,000 volumes that year, which was still housed in the Lyceum.

Photograph of Isom from "Expression in the South" Werner's Magazine 25, no. 4(1900): 339.

When Isom was hired in 1885 as the first female faculty member at the University of Mississippi, a half century of female presence in universities made the time propitious for a woman to assume a full faculty position. Born in 1850, she was educated at the August Seminary in Virginia. As a student, she traveled to Boston and London to study oratory, and she was renowned for her ability to read aloud with command. Isom taught elocution to her students to prepare them for public speaking, a pastime that truly gained significance through the literary societies of the nineteenth century. At the University, she taught with high standards and demanded the best from her students.

The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies continues Isom’s legacy, but also the legacies of women across the state. While we recognize the official positions that women have assumed over our state’s history, countless other women worked without recognition for their education and the betterment of their lives. We honor those women’s work and their foundation that makes the women of today’s University of Mississippi stand strong.

Notes

Ted Ownby, “Isom, Sarah McGehee,” Mississippi Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, 2017.

J.C.G. Typescript copy of “Mrs. Adelia M. Hillman,” from The Baptist. Biographical files, Brown University Special Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, RI.

“History of the W,” About, Mississippi University for Women. https://www.muw.edu/about/history/  26 March 2026.

“March 3 – Julia Wilcox,” UM Women’s History Month 2021, Sarah Isom Center, https://sarahisomcenter.org/women-of-um-1/2021/3/2/um-womens-history-month-2021. 26 March 2026.

“Women’s History Month,” The Daily Mississippian, https://issuu.com/dailymississippian/docs/the_daily_mississippian_march_19_2026, 19 March 2026

By Mary Freeman Long - March 2026