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Co-education. What does it exactly mean? In the current vernacular, co-education means the education of the sexes together within an institutional setting. Once a phenomenon, today, women enjoy nearly equal status on campuses that were at one time bastions of "maleness." Moreover, the counter-culture revolution of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, ushered in a new dimension of co-education aside from "mixed" classes (females/males), when student protests led to co-ed dormitories, an unthinkable arrangement only a few decades before. Yet, an older version or interpretation of co-education existed prior to the turn of the 20 century and well until the mid-century mark. This version understood co-education to be a "mixing" not of the sexes, but of the races-Blacks and Whites attending the same college or university.
The original purpose of this study was to examine how two southern universities within the same southern state dealt with the issue of co-education (male/female) in the first half of the 20 century. The issue then of admitting females to male institutions of higher learning largely involved needed additional revenue. Opponents to the admission of women usually cited a case of rigor as their major objection, meaning that females were likely not up to the intellectual challenge expected of males. Yet some university administrators put aside their initial prejudices and entertained the idea of admitting women as away to increase revenue. An initial examination of the background literature on co-education, however, revealed a much more complex understanding of co-education. What the literature uncovered was a definition of co-education that preceded the admission of females into institutions of high education. The earlier definition of co-education referred to the education of Negroes and Whites within the same institution of higher education (Thompson 1945, 522). This writer became intrigued with the background literature on co-education, especially legal cases, that dealt with co-education as a racial issue rather than a gender issue.
The racial issue was intriguing because it called into question if resistance to co-education of the sexes at the turn of the 20 century up to the mid-century mark, had, in fact, any foundation in the resistance to coeducation of the races following the Civil War. Even the notion during the first half of the 20 century of admitting...