Jefferson Hall (d. September 1921)

321 Jamestown Road, Williamsburg VA

Jefferson Hall was built and opened in 1921 specifically as all-female housing following women's admittance to the college in 1918. The hall included a gymnasium, pool, 125 dorms, and office space for female staff members. Today, the dorm building is co-ed and used exclusively for student housing. Jefferson Hall itself has been the site of multiple historic episodes in William and Mary's history, and its history is worth noting beyond its namesake. To begin, its founding marks the start of white women's presence on campus and the effects WWI had on William and Mary. There were 24 original women admitted in 1918, all of whom stayed in Jefferson Hall their senior year, assuming they stuck it out to graduation.      

Admitting women to William and Mary in 1918 was highly contested and protested before, during, and after the decision was made. An anonymous student published an appeal titled “Sine Qua Non” asking male students to, “let them [the women] know that they are not wanted and use whatever influence we have to drive co-education from our Alma Mater.”

Regardless, during 1918, World War I drove the school into financial straits, and the male student body dropped below 150 students. President Lyon G. Tyler petitioned the Virginia Education Commission to allow women to attend in a bid for both further tuition income and to receive federal funds. Educational rights activist Mary-Cooke Branch Mumford also had a large hand in admitting women to the college after unsuccessfully petitioning the University of Virginia five times from 1910-1918. She was a supporter of equal education practices and universal public schooling for ages K-8, especially lobbying for improved quality of education across races in the South.

While the admittance of women to William and Mary in 1918 was a great stride forward, black students, of either gender, were not allowed in residence until 1965, eleven years after Brown v. Board of Education. That chapter of William and Mary’s history also includes Jefferson Hall. The first African American women and African American students of any gender to live on campus were Lynn Briley, Janet Brown Strafer, and Karen Ely, who all stayed in Jefferson Hall during their freshman year of college. They are recognized on a plaque within the building. 

In an interview in 2016, all three women described their dorm experience. On their first night, an unidentified student wrote the n-word outside Jefferson Hall, in an attempt to terrorize the new black students. None of the three women were aware prior to moving in that they would be the first in-residence black students, and quickly realized, especially following this event, that they would be the only three black students in their social year. Despite this, they enjoyed a camaraderie with their Jefferson Hall neighbors based in part on being young in the chaotic events of the sixties. When speaking of her time at Jefferson Hall, Ely said, "We did a whole lot of going back and forth between other students rooms. I was surprised about that... people would run in your room, go in your closet... I wasn't used to being around other girls. It was a good bonding experience, really." 

Briley, Strafer, and Ely are commemorated outside of Jefferson Hall at Swem Library, with, among other things, three bronze molds of their faces. Briley, Strafer, and Ely all graduated in 1971, Briley with a B.A. in English, Strafer with a B.A. in Elementary Education, and Ely with a B.S. in Biology. All three women went on to earn masters degrees in their respective fields. Of the three, only Strafer has yet retired from her career, after 35 years of civilian federal service to the Army.  

Jefferson Hall’s position within William and Mary campus' history is nuanced and integral, despite being built 228 years after the school’s opening. It continues today as a dorm building for current and future William and Mary students. 

The Namesake - Thomas Jefferson (1746-1826)

Thomas Jefferson, an alum of William and Mary, class of 1762, held many political offices and honors throughout his lifetime. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses (1768), participated in two Constitutional Conventions (1774-1787), served on the Virginia house of Delegates (1776 – 1779), served as Governor of Virginia (1779-1781), re-entered public life as an American diplomat in France (1785), served as Secretary of State under George Washington (1790-1793), then as Vice President under John Adams (1797-1801), and was finally elected to the presidency after years of political maneuvering (1801-1808). Many admirers of Jefferson argue his massive contributions to the United States make him the ultimate American success story, and exult him as a heroic, Enlightenment scholar. His legacy as a Founding Father is well-assured in the American imagination, but the contradictions between his ideals and his actions tarnish his reputation.

During his presidency, Jefferson negotiated and authorized the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, expanding the United States' borders beyond any previous imaginings. His choice marked the beginning of American imperialism, and the United State's choice to follow in Europe's footsteps. It set the precedent for Manifest Destiny and the Homestead Act, post-Jefferson policies which displaced almost all Western Native American nations and lead to years of bloody warfare. Jefferson's actions in his political and domestic life, such as his purchasing of the Louisiana, reflected the colonization of the age.

The ultimate product of colonialism is also the thing which enabled Jefferson's lifelong power and success: slavery. As a young man, Jefferson protested slavery, a hollow sentiment undercut by his lifestyle and politics. He could not and did not predict the massive rise of slavery and plantation farming which came in the 1830s, and so assumed he didn't need to jeopardize his livelihood and political career to end something he believed would die out soon. Over the course of his lifetime, Jefferson owned roughly 600 people, and at any one time there would be around 100 enslaved persons  working and living at Monticello, Jefferson's 5,000 acre property. Jefferson's immense, generational wealth, built on free labor, gave him the time and resources to pursue his education and become one of the foremost statesmen of 18th century America. One must ask, then, how impressive are his personal achievements when contextualized against the massive head start afforded to him at birth? Are his personal contributions to America's founding worth the freedom, peace, and livelihood of 600 people?

His two written works of note are the Declaration of Independence and his sole book, Notes on the State of Virginia. In the book, written just prior to his tenure in France, Jefferson outlines an impressive summary of Virginian demographics, geography, native flora and fauna, agriculture, government systems, and culture. Here he also voices his opinion on slavery, delineating his plan to have it abolished slowly by 1800, at which point he believed all formerly enslaved people should be sent back to Africa. It is up for debate whether this deported population would include his own children with Sally Hemings, the enslaved half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife with whom Jefferson had four living, black children. She was fourteen to Jefferson's forty-four and isolated from her mother in France when he began pursuing her. 

Madison Hemings, Thomas Jefferson's son by Sally Hemings, wrote this of his father and childhood at Monticello: "he [Jefferson] was not in the habit of showing fatherly affection or partiality to us children" but  "we were free from the dread of having to be slaves all our lives long." Jefferson's children were permitted to stay with their mother before they were apprenticed to learn a craft to benefit Monticello. At 21, all four were emancipated and went North, where they married and lived the rest of their lives free. Jefferson never met any of his grandchildren by Sally Hemings. 

William and Mary named Jefferson Hall after this man in an attempt to honor his accomplishments, while also connecting themselves to his fame. They are careful to number him among William and Mary alumni, as they do with many statesmen-slaveholders who graduated from this school, and he remains a referenced presence on campus. He has reached a godlike status in American mythology. His every move in shaping America, as well as the choices of other Founding Fathers, is given a level of intention which sanctifies the Constitution even 235 years later. But granting infallibility to these men, including Thomas Jefferson, is dangerous and gives him far too much credit. He, like all of us, was just a person, who perhaps abused his power far more than he served his Enlightenment liberty.