Mixed Race Studies

Connecting the Dots in Suicide Prevention

Vassar Alumnae/i Quarterly
Poughkeepsie, New York
Spring/Summer 2014

Eric Marcus ’80

Rebecca Hyde ’92

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), suicide is the 10th leading cause of death for Americans. Christine Yu Moutier ’90 wants to do something about that.

Last fall, following two decades of working as a professor of psychiatry and assistant dean for student affairs and medical education at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Moutier was named chief medical officer for AFSP, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide.

From its headquarters in New York City, she manages a wide range of the organization’s work, including research funding ($5 million for current research), grant selection, and the dissemination of findings. She also oversees programs for survivors of suicide loss and coordinates educational efforts focused primarily on suicide prevention…

…While dedicated to her work as an academic, Moutier has always carved out time for clinical work. She considers her work with San Diego’s Asian refugee population a particular privilege.

“As a mixed-race person growing up in a town that was mostly Slavic and working class, I was teased, so I have special empathy for people who look and feel different. Also, because of mental illness in my own extended family, I grew up seeing how Western medicine wasn’t always trusted,” she says…

Read the entire article here.

Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897

Vassar Alumnae/i Quarterly
Volume 98, Issue 1 (Winter 2001)
Features

Olivia Mancini ‘00

When Anita Florence Hemmings applied to Vassar in 1893, there was nothing in her records to indicate that she would be any different from the 103 other girls who were entering the class of 1897. But by August 1897, the world as well as the college had discovered her secret: Anita Hemmings was Vassar’s first black graduate — more than 40 years before the college opened its doors to African Americans.

In the late 19th century, Vassar’s atmosphere might have been best described as aristocratic. Since its opening in 1861, the prestigious women’s school had catered almost exclusively to the daughters of the nation’s elite. Had Hemmings marked her race as “colored” on her application, her admittance to the college most certainly would have been denied.

“She has a clear olive complexion, heavy black hair and eyebrows and coal black eyes,” a Boston newspaper wrote of a 25-year-old Hemmings in August 1897. “The strength of her strain of white blood has so asserted itself that she could pass anywhere simply as a pronounced brunette of white race.”

And pass she did, until her white roommate voiced suspicions about Hemmings’ background to her own father only a few weeks before the class was due to graduate.

The father hired a private investigator to travel to Hemmings’ hometown of Boston. There it was discovered that homemaker Dora Logan and janitor Robert Williamson Hemmings had conspired with their daughter to keep her race a secret…

Read the entire article here.