Description
- Abstract:
- In this posthumous oral history interview with Michael Van Leesten, a descendant of Ethel Tremaine Robinson (class of 1905) and Cora Robinson (class of 1909), who were the first two known Black women to graduate from the Women’s College in Brown University, he discusses his extensive genealogical research into their lives. Van Leesten begins by sharing how he became interested in his family’s genealogy and how he later noticed that public biographies of Ethel and Cora Robinson remained incomplete following the commemorative naming of Page-Robinson Hall on the Brown campus. He highlights the various archival resources he utilized to reconstruct their stories, including federal censuses, city directories, vital records across multiple states, and early 20th-century publications documenting African American "strivers," such as The Colored American. Van Leesten explains the family history starting with the sisters’ parents, Jackson and Emily Jett who were enslaved in Rappahannock (now Remington), Virginia and their escape to freedom. The interview traces the distinct paths of the two sisters. While at Brown, Ethel participated in campus life, notably performing in a production of Dr. Faustus to fundraise for the women's gymnasium building. After graduating from Brown, Ethel worked at Howard University and played a supporting role in the founding of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Meanwhile, Cora after graduating, moved to Alabama to teach English at the historic Tuskegee Institute. Shortly after she married and had a son. Cora and her husband moved back to Providence, Rhode Island and eventually separated. Later in her life she suffered from mental health issues but remained close with her son. Cora has a robust legacy of 54 living descendants, the vast majority of whom pursued higher education. Van Leesten concludes by discussing his own father’s civic legacy and civil rights advocacy in Providence during the 1950s and 1960s, noting the profound personal significance of the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge in linking his father's public achievements back to the foundational legacy of Ethel and Cora Robinson. Please note that this abstract was originally drafted by Gemini and reviewed and edited by an archivist.
- Notes:
- Biographical/historical note: Michael Van Leesten, Jr. Michael Van Leesten, Jr. is an educator and genealogical researcher who has actively documented the histories of early twentieth-century Black scholars, particularly his maternal great-aunt Ethel Robinson (Brown University class of 1905) and maternal great-grandmother Cora Robinson (Brown University class of 1909), the first two known Black women to graduate from the Women’s College in Brown University. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, near the Brown University campus, Van Leesten attended Classical High School before earning his degree from Dartmouth College. Following a career in investment banking, Van Leesten transitioned to the field of education as a mathematics teacher. His academic research utilizes an array of primary sources—including United States and municipal censuses, vital statistics registries, city directories, and historical periodicals—to reconstruct the linear biographies of historical figures who faced racial isolation in higher education and the professional sphere. Beyond his archival and genealogical contributions, Van Leesten represents a prominent family legacy in Rhode Island; he is the son of civil rights activist and community leader Michael Van Leesten, Sr., for whom the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge in Providence is named. Ethel Robinson Ethel Tremaine Robinson was born in 1878 to parents who had escaped enslavement. She grew up in a Providence boarding house managed by her mother and graduated from Classical High School. She is the first known Black woman to graduate from Brown University, earning her A.B. in English literature in 1905. After graduation, racist beliefs of the era stalled her public school teaching career in Rhode Island. She moved on to become a lecturer at Howard University in 1908, where she famously mentored the student founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the nation's first intercollegiate Black sorority. In 1914, Robinson’s life became more complicated when she married Cuban diplomat Joaquin Higinio Piñero y Mora. The marriage took her to Bordeaux, France, and Cuba, and produced two children, Enrique and Maria. By 1920, the family returned to the United States, where Robinson worked as a clerk and occasionally passed as white to sustain them amid her husband's dwindling employment prospects. Following a final return to Cuba in 1923, Piñero y Mora was imprisoned for a fatal upscale home invasion, resulting in the permanent separation of Robinson from her children, whose ultimate fates remain unknown. Robinson returned to Providence alone, where she secured a divorce on grounds of neglect to provide in 1934, briefly re-enrolled at Brown as a graduate student, and worked occasionally as a teacher until her death from cardiac renal insufficiency on December 7, 1942. Cora Robinson Cora Robinson was born circa 1890 to parents who had escaped enslavement. She grew up in a Providence boarding house managed by her mother and graduated from Classical High School. She is the second known Black woman to graduate from Brown University, earning her A.B. degree in 1909. Following her graduation, she dedicated her early career to education, relocating to Alabama to teach English at the Tuskegee Institute during the Jim Crow era. In 1912 she married Hendrick Van Leesten in Alabama and in 1913 she gave birth to their son, Hendrik, Jr. Around 1917, the family returned to Providence where Robinson raised her family. However, her later professional and personal life was marked by severe hardship; a debilitating, long-term umbilical hernia permanently restricted her mobility, while the onset of the Great Depression devastated her family's financial stability and disrupted her son's college funding. Isolated after separating from her husband, Robinson moved to Boston to live with her son in 1946. There, she began suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. By 1950, she became institutionalized as an inpatient at the Boston Dispensary. Upon transfer to Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary her condition deteriorated, causing acute peritonitis. On May 3, 1951, she died of complications from surgery to repair the hernia at the age of 62.
- Class year: 1905, 1909
- Michael Van Leesten, posthumous interview related to Ethel Robinson, class of 1905, and Cora Robinson, class of 1909, Brown University Library
- Digital object made available by: Brown University Library, John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts, Box A, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, U.S.A., (http://library.brown.edu/)
Citation
"Michael Van Leesten, posthumous interview related to Ethel Robinson, class of 1905, and Cora Robinson, class of 1909"
Pembroke Center Oral History Collection.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:838164/
Relations
Has Parts:
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Michael Van Leesten, posthumous interview related to Ethel Robinson, class of 1905, and Cora Robinson, class of 1909
- Type: Video
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Michael Van Leesten, posthumous interview related to Ethel Robinson, class of 1905, and Cora Robinson, class of 1909
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Michael Van Leesten, posthumous interview related to Ethel Robinson, class of 1905, and Cora Robinson, class of 1909
- Type: Pdf
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Collection:
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Pembroke Center Oral History Collection
This collection contains oral history interviews with alumnae of Brown University, which admitted its first women students in 1891. The Women's College at Brown was renamed Pembroke College in 1928, and in 1971, Pembroke College merged with the Men's College …...