Scope and arrangement
The Black Women at Oberlin College Survey Project collection consists of fifty-three questionnaires. The information gathered in the questionnaires ranges from issues about college life to race, gender, and personal and professional backgrounds, including participation in community activities. There is data concerning the campus lives of these women, especially the relationship between blacks and whites and other minority groups, the unity of black students, black student organizations, the concerns of black students on campus, affirmative action, and the general feelings about being black women in a predominately white college, spanning six decades.
In addition to the questionnaires for Boston's project, there is a photocopy of a questionnaire completed by Anna Julia Cooper, an educator and 1884 Oberlin graduate, on which Boston's questionnaire was based. The Cooper manuscript collection at the Moorland Spingarn Research Center at Howard University contains her questionnaire from a survey with which the sociologist Charles S. Johnson was involved, entitled "Negro College Graduates." An article by Boston, "A Matter of Race and Sex: Black Women at Oberlin College" summarizing her research results is also included in the collection (1983).