Lucinda Foote is best known for attempting to study at

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

(now University) in 1783, some 186 years prior to women being admitted. Her name was later used by protesters supporting the admission of women to the University in 1963.

Biography

In 1783, female student Lucinda Foote undertook the entrance exams for

(now University), at the age of 12 years old. Based on the results of the exams, in both

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, she met the required standard to study at the university. However, she was rejected on the basis of her gender by the President of the University,

Ezra Stiles Ezra Stiles ( – May 12, 1795) was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College (1778–1795) and one of the founders of Brown University. According ...

. Stiles wrote of Foote's application, "Let it be known unto you, that I have tested Miss Lucinda Foote, aged 12, by way of examination, proving that she has made laudable progress in the languages of the learned, viz, the Latin and the Greek; to such an extent that I found her translating and expouding with perfick (sic) ease, both words and sentences in the whole of Vergil's Aeneid, in selected orations of Cicero, and in the Greek testament. I testify that were it not for her sex, she would be considered fit to be admitted as a student of Yale."

Legacy

When the subject of the admission of women to Yale University was raised in 1963, the student demonstrators referred to themselves as the Lucinda Foote Committee. When the prospect of naming two new colleges within the University arose in 2014, history professor

Jay Gitlin A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian m ...

suggested naming them after Foote or

Grace Hopper Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of compu ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foote, Lucinda American women academics Yale University people United States gender discrimination case law 1770s births Year of death unknown