Caste and College Opportunities
Meharry Medical College Graduation, Nashville, Tennessee 1911, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
As a native of Pulaski, I wonder why Dr. Alvenia Fulton’s (1893 to 1999) did attend an undergraduate or graduate school in Nashville, Tennessee just 75 miles away. Colleges and universities in nearby Nashville produced African-American professionals who helped meet the needs of black Pulaski after the Civil War. Pulaski and Nashville had interlocking rural and urban black communities, which supported each other's educational institutions and organizations. What blacks in Nashville and Pulaski produced benefited each other’s communities in multiple ways. Although admittedly a distant, Nashville functioned as a satellite city for Pulaski with excellent educational opportunities including Fisk University, Central Tennessee College, Roger Williams University, and Meharry Medical School. In Afro-American Women of the South and the Advancement of the Race, 1895-1925, Historian Cynthia Neverdon-Morton tell us geography and individual differences shaped the educational experiences of African American women in the South. Location, caste, and gender worked to influence one's opportunities. But above all else, caste determined African American access to educational institutions.
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