white Christian nation—has deliberately set its
curse upon the most beautiful—the most holy thing
in life—motherhood!” Overcome by the family
tragedy and the larger implications of such vio-
lence, she collapses in the arms of her mother.
Act Two is set seven years later, a symbolic
passage of time that suggests Rachel’s maturation
and growth. She has become the adoptive mother
of Jimmy, a young neighbor who reminds Mrs. Lov-
ing of her murdered son George. Rachel seems to
be thriving in her new role and prides herself on
providing Jimmy with much love and attention.
Her confidence is shaken, however, when Mrs.
Lane, a new neighbor, shares her harrowing stories
about her daughter’s abuse in the neighborhood
school. At the end of the women’s conversation,
Mrs. Lane shocks Rachel with her philosophies
about bearing children of color into the modern
American world. When Rachel inquires as to
whether the woman has any other children, Mrs.
Lane makes the following startling reply: “(dryly)
Hardly! If I had another—I’d kill it. It’s kinder.” As
she leaves, Mrs. Lane instructs Rachel to avoid
motherhood altogether. “Don’t marry,” she says.
Act Two ends as Rachel’s “honey boy,” the light-
skinned Jimmy, shares his tales of children target-
ing him with stones and harsh racial epithets. “The
stone hurts me there, Ma Rachel,” the child says,
“but what they called me hurts and hurts here.”
As the act ends, Rachel sinks prostrate to the
floor and vows to God that “no child of mine shall
ever lie upon my breast, for I will not have it rise
up, in the terrible days that are to be—and call me
cursed.” The biblical Old Testament rhetoric that
Grimké employs underscores the intensity of the
feminine distress and reproductive crisis prompted
by racist social aggression.
Grimké’s meditation on African-American
women’s responses to lynching and racial violence
intensifies as the play continues. Rachel accepts
and then rejects her suitor’s proposal of marriage.
The distraught young woman descends into a
melodramatic depression. Ultimately she decides
that she can never bring children into a cruel and
fallen world. Her politicized abstinence and self-
imposed sterility are nonnegotiable. Ultimately
they are literally maddening. Rachel descends into
an inaccessible melancholy and is lost to her family
and community.
The play Rachelwas published in 1920. Critics
like Gloria Hull note that the play is perhaps more
powerful as a written than a performed piece.Bibliography
Hull, Gloria. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers
of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
Miller, Ericka. The Other Reconstruction: Where Violence
and Womanhood Meet in the Writings of Wells-Barnett,
Grimké, and Larsen.New York: Garland, 2000.Radcliffe College
In 1999 Radcliffe College ended its 120-year role
as an undergraduate institution for women. It
merged with HARVARDUNIVERSITYand became
the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at
Harvard.
The school was named after Lady Ann Rad-
cliffe Mowlson, who in 1643 became the first in-
dividual to establish a scholarship fund at
Harvard College. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, widow
of Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, served as the
first president. Radcliffe was part of an influential
consortium of women’s colleges known as the
Seven Sisters. Its six sister colleges were Barnard,
Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, and
Wellesley.
Radcliffe students did not have full privileges
at Harvard University. It was not until 1943 that
the two schools agreed to joint instruction. The
schools enjoyed their first combined commence-
ment in 1970.
Accomplished Radcliffe graduates who shaped
the Harlem Renaissance include MARITABONNER,
Caroline Stewart Bond Day, and EVADYKES. Bon-
ner, who majored in English and comparative liter-
ature, also composed her class song and founded
the Radcliffe chapter of DELTA SIGMA THETA.
Dykes, a graduate of DUNBARHIGHSCHOOl and
HOWARDUNIVERSITY, completed graduate studies
at Radcliffe and was one of the first women of
color to receive a Ph.D. in the United States.Bibliography
Howells, Dorothy. A Century to Celebrate: Radcliffe Col-
lege, 1879–1979.Cambridge, Mass.: Radcliffe Col-
lege, 1978.Radcliffe College 439