That's the Black Fact: Introducing Lucy Stanton Day Sessions
Lucy Staton Day Sessions
“Welcome to ‘That’s the Black Fact’. In this space you’ll find profiles on the culture and the people who built it!”
By: Ervin Green
Welcome to “That’s the Black Fact.” In this space you’ll find profiles on the culture and the people who built it!
Lucy Stanton Day Sessions (1831-1910)
Born free in Cleveland, Ohio, her father was a barber who passed before she was born, and her mother remarried later to a wealthy black businessman who was also an abolitionist and a participator in the Underground Railroad. Her stepfather created a school for African Americans because they couldn’t attend public schools.
As you can imagine, her household was all about the academics and she loved it. In 1846, she enrolled in Oberlin Collegiate Institute (now Oberlin College) where she continued to excel academically and in 1849, she was elected president of the school’s Ladies Literary Society. Sessions is believed to be the first African American woman to graduate from college in 1850. Her commencement speech was said to be a moving appeal for anti slavery.
In 1866 she was sponsored by the Cleveland Freedman's Association to teach in Georgia and later Mississippi, where she met and married her second husband in 1878. The couple moved to Tennessee where Lucy Sessions continued her philanthropic work, including serving as president of the local Women's Christian Temperance Union. She and her husband later moved to Los Angeles, California. Lucy Stanton Day Sessions died in Los Angeles in 1910.
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