Considering the Past: Topics in M.C. History

“The Immortal 10” is the name given to the first graduating class of the Baptist Female University on May 21, 1902.  Dr. Thomas E. Skinner, a prominent Baptist pastor and fundraiser for the school, invoked during the opening prayer for commencement, “Heaven’s blessing on the ‘Immortal Ten,’ that they might add the glory of true Christian lives to the honors of intellectual attainments.” After two of the graduate’s papers were read, and a musical interlude, the graduates were finally handed their diplomas – one Masters of Arts and nine Bachelor of Arts. - by Board of Trustees president Mr. W. M. Jones. 

That these women graduated after only three years after the school’s opening in 1899 was due to their academic work prior to coming to the new university, either from other institutions or through private tutoring. 

In a remembrance printed in The Alumnae Magazine in 1949, Margaret Whitmore Shields Everet noted that to the graduates, their Class Day celebration earlier in the month on May 10 was more meaningful to them than Commencement. On that day, the graduates were all dressed in full-length white pique skirts and white shirtwaist blouses. Their high collars were topped with black velvet bands on which they wore their matching gold class pins. Held in the college chapel with students and friends in attendance, the program consisted of the reading of a Class Will, prophesies, and a poem. Finally, the soon-to-be graduates presented their class gift to the school: a small custom-made chest engraved “B.F.U.” and which held $19.75. The class intended this cash gift to serve as the beginning of an endowment fund for the college and to inspire future classes.
 
In the photograph below, the class is posed in front of Main Building of the original downtown campus, having finished planting  a tree to commemorate the school's first graduating class.
   
The names of the ten women of the Class of 1901 receiving degrees:
Margaret Kesler (M.A.)
Mary Estelle Johnson
Elizabeth Parker
Rosa Catherine Paschal
Mary Perry
Margaret Whitmore Shields
Minnie Willis Sutton
Elizabeth Gladys Tull
Eliza Rebecca Wooten
Sophie Stevens Lanneau

In addition to the degrees conferred that day, the Baptist Female University also awarded a diploma in music, two diplomas in art, a certificate in music and two certificates in art. In these early days, before the college was fully accredited, indeed, before North Carolina had many opportunities for secondary education, the college had accepted young women who were interested in an education limited to diplomas or certificates in the schools of music or art.