duPont, Jessie Ball
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duPont, Jessie Ball
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Jessie Ball duPont was a segregationist who donated an estimated $7 million to the University of the South between 1945 and 1970.
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Jessie Ball duPont was born in Hardings, Virginia, in 1884. According to historian Samuel Williamson, she believed “blacks were by nature substantially inferior to white people[.]” This belief influenced her life as an educator and a philanthropist.
She was a schoolteacher until she married the wealthy manufacturer, Alfred I. duPont. With the immense wealth of the duPont family, the couple became philanthropists. While in residence in Florida, they developed a close relationship with its Episcopal Bishop, Frank Alexander Juhan. Following the death of her husband, the friendship of Bishop Juhan and Jessie duPont grew stronger. Juhan was a Sewanee graduate, and he served as its Chancellor (the highest church authority) in the 1940s. Even after his term ended, he exercised unusual power in the administration of the University. Under his influence, duPont became the University's largest benefactor. Between 1945 and even after her death in 1970, gifts from Jessie Ball duPont to the University of the South amounted to more than $7 million.
Jessie Ball duPont used her influence to oppose the integration of both the college and the seminary. She believed African Americans were naturally inferior to whites, and that private colleges should hold the line against desegregation. DuPont worked to support firing Sewanee's seminary faculty, who offered their resignations over the University's refusal to desegregate its School of Theology in 1952. DuPont directed that her funds could be used to support only white students and faculty. Beyond agreeing to the strings attached to her donations, the University of awarded her a degree of Doctor of Civil Law in 1945 and named its new library for her in 1965.
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1884
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1970
Position: 634 (11 views)
