Women’s History on HBCU Campuses

Image Credit: Niday Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo

Do you remember the name of your HBCU dorm?

Did you ever pause to learn the story behind the name etched above its doors?

This Women’s History Month, HBCU Leggings is taking a moment to celebrate the women whose influence runs so deep that it has been memorialized in brick and mortar across our campuses.

I had the distinct privilege of attending Howard University. At the time, freshman women could choose to live in either the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle or the Mary McLeod Bethune Annex. Like many first-year students, I was swept up in the excitement of move-in day, new friendships, and newfound independence. It wasn’t until years later that I truly explored the significance of those buildings and the legacies they carried.

Learning who those women were shifted my understanding of what it means to walk across a campus committed to honoring their legacy.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities have always understood something powerful:

If you want students to see what is possible, surround them with evidence.

Let’s take a closer look at how Howard and other HBCUs preserve the legacy of Black women through the spaces students call home.

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Image credit: McKissack&McKissack

Howard University: The Quad and the Women Who Shaped It

The Harriet Tubman Quadrangle, better known as “The Quad,” is one of the most iconic residential spaces on Howard’s campus. The complex includes multiple halls named after figures whose lives shaped Black intellectual and political history.

The Quad itself honors Harriet Tubman, often called the “Black Moses” for her leadership on the underground railroad. After escaping enslavement in Maryland, Tubman returned at least thirteen times to guide others to freedom. During the Civil War, she served as a Union spy and helped lead the Combahee River Raid, freeing more than 700 enslaved people. Her courage was strategic and relentless.

Truth Hall is named after Sojourner Truth, whose speeches on abolition and women’s rights challenged the nation to confront its contradictions. Her voice reshaped conversations about race and gender in the nineteenth century.

Wheatley Hall honors Phillis Wheatley, one of the first published African American poets. Born into slavery, she became a literary force whose work continues to inspire writers centuries later.

Frazier Hall is named after Julia Caldwell Frazier, a pioneering Black educator and the third Black woman to graduate from Howard University. She later became the first Black woman to serve as a high school principal in Dallas, Texas. Her leadership extended beyond the classroom into community activism.

Crandall Hall recognizes Prudence Crandall, who opened the first school for Black girls in New England in the 1830s, facing fierce opposition for doing so.

Photo of Mary McLeod Bethune - Daytona Beach, Florida, circa 1915. (State Archives of Florida/Coursen)

But Wait, There’s More

Now, let’s address Baldwin Hall.

Baldwin Hall, also part of the Quad, is named after James Baldwin, the prolific writer whose searing analysis of race and American identity shaped twentieth-century literature. While Baldwin himself was not a woman, the decision to include his name within a residential space for women reflects the intellectual ecosystem Howard cultivates. Black women’s education has always existed in conversation with broader movements for liberation. Baldwin’s work challenged the nation’s conscience, and his proximity within the Quad underscores that advocacy, artistry, and intellectual rigor are communal efforts.

Howard’s campus tells a layered story. It honors women who liberated, educated, organized, and wrote. It also situates them within a broader intellectual tradition that insists Black scholarship matters.

And then there is Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.

The Mary McLeod Bethune Annex pays tribute to one of the most influential educators of the twentieth century. Bethune founded the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls in 1904 with $1.50, faith, and an unwavering belief in Black education. She created pencils from charred wood, ink from elderberries, and mattresses from moss-filled corn sacks. Within two years, her school grew from five students to 250. She later founded a hospital and training school for nurses to address healthcare inequities in her community. She advised presidents and championed the advancement of Black women nationwide.

Imagine being a first-year student walking into a dorm named after her and understanding the power behind it.

The message is clear. Black women’s influence in progressive change is too important to be forgotten. 

And Howard University is not the only HBCU that knows it.

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Beyond Howard: Black Women Whose Names Shape Other HBCU Campuses

Howard’s campus tells a powerful story, but it is not the only one.

Across the country, HBCUs have etched the names of Black women into their residence halls, academic centers, and living-learning communities. These names are not decorative; they remind us of something. They remind students that leadership, scholarship, philanthropy, and institutional stewardship have always included women at the center.

Let’s look at a few more campuses where women’s legacies are built into the everyday rhythm of student life.

Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Image Credit: UNCF

Bennett College

At Bennett College, honoring women isn’t dedicated to one month a year, it’s how they operate. As one of the nation’s historically Black colleges for women, its campus reflects generations of intentional investment in Black female education.

The Annie Merner Pfeiffer Residence Hall requires a deeper look.

Annie Merner Pfeiffer was not a Black woman. She was a philanthropist whose advocacy for education, particularly women’s education, was significant during a period when investing in the education of Black women was considered radical. Born in Ontario and later based in the United States, Pfeiffer became deeply involved in educational philanthropy through her leadership in the Women's Home Missionary Society. Over the course of her lifetime, she directed substantial financial support to colleges across the country, including gifts totaling more than $1.5 million in buildings, cash, and stocks at a time when that level of giving dramatically shaped institutional survival.

She received honorary degrees from multiple institutions, including Bennett College in 1941. Her philanthropy extended to junior colleges, four-year institutions, and mission-based schools at a time when higher education for women, especially Black women, faced significant financial and social barriers.

At Bennett, her name reflects a broader truth. The advancement of Black women’s education has required both courageous students and strategic allies willing to fund and defend those institutions. Supporting a historically Black women’s college during the early twentieth century was not socially neutral. It was an investment in expanding opportunity.

Alongside Pfeiffer Hall stands the Johnnetta Betsch Cole Honors Residence Hall, honoring Johnnetta Betsch Cole, a distinguished anthropologist and former president of both Bennett College and Spelman College. Dr. Cole’s scholarship and leadership embody the intellectual authority Bennett cultivates.

Together, these buildings tell a layered story. Black women lead, build, and sustain institutions. And at critical moments in history, advocacy and philanthropy have helped ensure those institutions endure.

At Bennett College, the commitment to educating Black women is both a mission and a legacy etched into its campus.

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A Tradition Across Campuses

Commemorating women at HBCUs is a long tradition, and the list goes on and on. At Spelman College, the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation and the Arts honors visionary arts leadership, while at Norfolk State University, Babbette Smith North and South Halls recognize institutional stewardship and community leadership. Hampton University commemorates Gladys Franklin White, embedding women’s contributions into a campus defined by tradition and excellence, and at North Carolina A&T State University, Barbee Hall honors Zoe Parks Barbee, affirming that service and dedication shape institutions as surely as activism and public acclaim.

Across these campuses, the message is consistent. Women are foundational in institutional history. HBCUs ensure their names are spoken daily, their legacies are remembered, and their contributions are never taken for granted.

This Women’s History Month, take a moment to learn the names on your campus and the stories behind them. Then wear that legacy with pride.

Shop your HBCU at HBCULeggings.com for yourself or for the women who helped shape your journey. Honor the history you walk through every day.

Love and Leggings,

Bibi