Considering the Past: Topics in M.C. History

During the 1918-1919 academic year, Meredith College students, faculty and employees had to contend with the “Spanish” influenza epidemic that ravaged the United States and the world. While there was no student newspaper at this time, snippets of information can be gleaned from the 1919 yearbook.

In October, 1918, the city of Raleigh made the decision to quarantine the campus. To accommodate the rules, male faculty remained on campus and  roomed together in a music studio fitted up with four cots and a dresser – and provoking bits of campus teasing. Patriotically, students volunteered to sew masks for the Red Cross. The college's physician, Dr. Delia Dixon-Carroll, ensured that the young women in her charge wore warm clothing, gargled every morning and took regular walks in the fresh air. But students were no longer allowed to leave campus to walk to shop or for exercise. According to the yearbook, “Black Letter Days” were, “Sept. 15….We give up shopping” and “Oct. 1…We give up walking.”  (And, and according to the "news" in the yearbook,  if they complained that they were no longer able to go to the drug store, to White's Ice Cream or to the ten-cent store, there was possibly the compensation that mandatory church attendance was also suspended.)

Nevertheless, physical vigor – and morale – must be upheld. The emerging epidemic coincided with the final months of World War I, during which campus culture had taken on military discipline and flair. The student body formed the "S.A.T.C." (probably an acronym for “Student Army Training Corp”) made up of four companies "A,” "B," "C," and "D." Each company was under the command of a captain from the senior class and was drilled by army Major Baxter Durham and the director of physical education, “Major” Gertrude Royster in marching “squads left or right or bout face.” The students arose early to dress in their middy blouses, to engage military slang and to trudge “from one end of our wee campus to the other until every soldier knew every bump and blade of grass on the entire square.”

The city’s quarantine of the college ended with the Christmas holidays; the student body had successfully avoided the flu. It was then, presumably, that the companies “were allowed to march proudly down the streets of Raleigh and the Raleigh people on every doorstep greeted us with bursts of applause, so that we were made to realize how we citizens should scream when a real soldier passes by…. With Majors Durham and Royster at the head, followed by Lieutenant (Celia) Herring and Sergeant Major (Margaret) Stroud, the army marched with triumphant step, Color Sergeant (Madeline) Higgs proudly bearing the flag before us.”

Probably having enjoyed the camaraderie of group exercise, walking clubs continued, on and off, for several years at Meredith.