Considering the Past: Topics in M.C. History

Elizabeth Delia Dixon-Carroll (1872-1934) served as college physician and taught physiology and hygiene at Meredith for 35 years. After earning her medical degree in 1895 from Women's Medical College in New York, she became the first woman licensed as a doctor in Raleigh and maintained a practice in Raleigh.  She also became an integral part of the new women’s college when it opened its doors in 1899. Respected and beloved, she remained there until her death 35 years later. Carroll Infirmary, later Carroll Hall, was named for the doctor when it was dedicated in 1962. 

While at Meredith, Carroll formed a close bond with many of the students and faculty through her lectures and classes, her medical care and campus projects.  Jokes abound in the yearbooks referencing student’s efforts to outmaneuver her supervision and rules. 

Specifically, Dixon-Carroll had inflexible ideas on self-care. She insisted that students wear long-sleeved undergarments and high-topped shoes from November 1st to April 1st.  Her other rules were itemized in a chapel talk in 1930. Dixon-Carroll declared that “every girl needs nine hours of sleep and must have at least eight. Both windows should be wide open and the heat turned off. The body can be sufficiently heated with heavy blankets, but the head must be kept from under the covers in order to get pure wholesome air.” After a bath, breakfast and brushing the teeth, Dixon-Carroll recommended “a brisk walk for an hour or two is the best exercise you can get, but not in the slouchy way in which girls stroll to the gate and back.” 

In addition to her work as a physician, Dixon-Carroll was known in North Carolina for her political and social work. She spoke on behalf of the women’s suffrage movement and worked as a trustee for Samaracand, a Moore County institution for troubled girls and women. But recent evaluations of Dr. Dixon-Carroll lead to a more complete understanding of her activism: woman suffrage was promoted as a tool for white supremacy to suppress African-Americans; Samaracand had a flawed, sometimes abusive culture. She was a an officer in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization with a troubling history. And it is significant to note that her brother, Thomas Dixon, Jr.,  a white supremacist, wrote two best-selling novels,  The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden 1865-1900 (1902) and The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905.)    
 
Dr. Angela Robbins, Associate Professor of History at Meredith College, has researched and written about Dr. Dixon-Carroll, and has observed:

   "Dixon-Carroll’s life and career offer insight not only into her own complicated legacy but also the significance of white women to the causes of racial segregation, white supremacy, and Democratic Party leadership. Perhaps more than any other Meredith College figure for whom a campus building has been named, she presents us with a predicament: while we celebrate that she was a feminist, a successful professional, and a leading social reformer who embodied precisely what women’s education was about and what her students aspired to be, we must also reckon with the reality that she used her standing in the community and her status as a Dixon to insist that white women, including her students, use their newfound political voice to preserve white supremacy for the ages."

In 2023, in light of recent research, the Board of Trustees elected to rename Carroll Hall as the Student Health and Wellness Center.