Cromwell Day

How to Have Challenging Conversations Across Difference 2.0

With Leaders for Equity-Centered and Action-Based Design (LEAD) Scholars

1:30–3 p.m., first floor of Seelye Hall
Leaders for Equity-Centered and Action-Based Design (LEAD) scholars will be celebrating Cromwell Day by facilitating workshops for students focusing on the theme, “How to Have Challenging Conversations Across Difference.” Participants will engage in peer-facilitated workshops designed around a range of topics, all with the goal of teaching participants the tools necessary to have hard conversations.

Target audience: students

History of Cromwell Day: Video Screening and Virtual Q&A About the Origins of Cromwell Day

With Professor Ginetta E.B. Candelario ’90

1:30–3 p.m., Neilson Browsing Room 
This workshop will screen the first video produced by the College in 2014 documenting “The Life and Legacy of Otelia Cromwell” as the inspiration for today’s Cromwell Day. The screening will be followed by an interactive conversation with Professor Ginetta E.B. Candelario ’90, who has participated in the College’s ongoing efforts to address racism and other forms of injustice as a student in the 1980s, an alum in the 1990s, and a faculty member since 1999.

The Life of 1896 Smith Alum & Indigenous American Artist Angel DeCora

With SWG/CCX 245: Collective Organizing

1:30–3 p.m., The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center, Wright Hall
This workshop will recognize and honor DeCora’s life and contributions on two anniversaries—the 130th anniversary of her graduation from Smith College and 155th anniversary of her birth. We will share an interactive presentation discussing her life, work, and the broader implications of the interconnected nature of Smith and indigenous land dispossession. Then, since DeCora was such a wonderfully talented artist herself, this workshop will move into a more participatory art-journaling exercise where we will use prompts that engage with DeCora and her legacy.

Free and (Un)fair? The Supreme Court and Voting Rights in the United States

With Assistant Professor Joseph Cozza

1:30–3 p.m., Weinstein Auditorium
This workshop will examine the Supreme Court’s voting rights jurisprudence from the Warren Court to the Roberts Court. More specifically, we will discuss how the Court has approached questions of redistricting, voter ID laws, campaign finance, and minority voting rights as well as the Constitutional basis for such decisions. Broadly, the goal of this workshop is to both understand the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence and to question the role the Court has played in the expansion and contraction of voting rights in the United States.

Target audience: everyone

Resting to Rise for Changemakers: A Collective Pause to Build Power

With Professor Benita Jackson

1:30–3 p.m., Graham Hall, Hillyer Hall
For many of us who long to contribute to social transformation, trying to “be the change” can be exhausting. It is hard to build solidarity across groups when we ourselves feel depleted.

In this Resting to Rise workshop, we explore how even a modest amount of rest can have outsized, liberatory effects on movement building.

Rest can help heal our individual and collective nervous systems, make room to envision the worlds we want, and give us the courage to act and to support one another in taking our next right steps, imperfect and even pleasurable.

Come curious to learn, ready to close your eyes, open to imagining other worlds, and prepared to plant seeds of action.

Benita Jackson is on a mission to support personal development for social transformation. She is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Smith College, where she directs the Society, Psychology, and Health Laboratory. She is also a co-parent of teen twins, founder of Resting to Rise, and bass ukulele fledgling.

Target audience: everyone

What Does it Mean to Be a Steward at Smith College?

With Kayla Marie Knox ’29

1:30–3 p.m., Alumnae House Conference Hall
This workshop will be highlighting the importance of being a part of a community and the different ways we as students can make a difference within our community and how we also work to keep our community running. Sponsored by BSA.

Target audience: students

We’ve Been Here: Relearning Our Roots as Unity Organizations

With LASO, BSA, and ASA

3:15–4:45 p.m., Davis Ballroom
We’ve Been Here explores the history of unity organizations and the importance of the existence of spaces for students from marginalized communities to gather on campus.

This event will highlight how Cromwell Day, Black Students’ Alliance (BSA), Latin American Student Organization (LASO), and Asian Student Association (ASA) came to be. Not just the need for a group of students to connect with, but also a physical space where we are allowed and recognized, such as Unity House and Mwangi Cultural Center. In these spaces is where we find safe community and solidarity with one another. We will also uplift newly established unity orgs and share their importance and journey.

By reviewing our past, we can recognize the present and realize our future. Refreshments provided.

Target audience: students

Redefining Access: Future-Proofing Smith College Diversity in Post-SFFA Admissions

3:15–4:45 p.m., location forthcoming
This workshop will be to educate the campus community on admissions efforts to continue to recruit a diverse class to Smith College. This will be a comprehensive look into recruitment efforts, community collaborations, and more.

Target audience: everyone

Solidarity in Times of Crisis

With SACSA, PASA, and Assistant Professor Anna Mwaba

3:15–4:45 p.m., location forthcoming
Join the Smith African and Caribbean Student Association (SACSA) and the Pan-African Student Association (PASA) for an informative and experiential event about current events on the African continent. The event will begin with a brief presentation by Professor Anna Mwaba, assistant professor of government at Smith College, and transition into a facilitated exercise. Attendees are invited to reflect not only on the current state of affairs on the African continent, but the ways in which community and solidarity continues to thrive in spite of social and geographic boundaries.

Target audience: students

To Re-Member: Disinheriting Settler Logics in Order to Reunite

With Anjali D’Souza

4–6 p.m., Lyman Plant House
Settler violence is so often slow but cognitive, immaterial in a sense, with deep and far-reaching material consequences. These ways of knowing and being are effected in the physical design of the spaces we navigate. While legalized policies and collective acts of terror in the 19th century deliberately enforced the dehumanization of peoples of and beyond the newly formed [and re-formed] Union, de facto ways of knowing and being today, which we have inherited, are more pernicious.

To inherit social identities, etiquette, and a status quo, we participate in, continue, and contest forms of “soft culture” (for example, what we take for granted as categories of print literature or mapmaking). In Alaina E. Roberts’ I’ve Been Here All the While, we are reminded—or, for some, are informed for the first time—that nineteenth-century narratives of industrious pioneers throughout the so-called frontiers reshaped belonging while dispossessing peoples of their land relations by way of the course of the founding of the United States; its effect was to create racial hierarchies.

These dominant narratives of American exceptionalism, a byproduct of Manifest Destiny, marginalized and continues to obscure the lived realities of peoples, with oral histories and intergenerational storytelling revealing the erasures in institutionally-recorded histories. Through settler logics, racialization and botanical sciences have emerged, rendering school systems, which produce learners and society members who enact these very logics based on decontextual, human supremacist, and Judeo-Christian conceptions of relationality.

This workshop will invite us to re-member and hold space for re-membering (Kimmerer) into community, not just the human one but the more-than-human ones, as well. We’ll meet a few plants which are neighbors residing in Lyman, ask how they came to become objects of study and who they are to each of us and people for whom kinship is centuries and millennia old. We’ll reflect together on language and how language inheritances dictate or foreclose our abilities to recognize non-humans as kin. Finally, we’ll write short notes to a plant we have become acquainted with, either in person or through familial or community sharing, on paper made of Itadori (Japanese knotweed), in the process, problematizing the too objectifying dichotomy of native and invasive nomenclature, one that is not interchangeable with Roberts’ critique of racialized discourse in the U.S., but shares certain parallels.

Target audience: everyone

M’le bato: Are You My People?

With The Performance Project

5–6 p.m., Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre, Mendenhall
M’le bato follows two young African men who meet as strangers while sharing a room and gradually develop a friendship as they learn about each other’s lives. Through scenes, movement, and memory, M’le bato travels through time and across borders as the two men revisit moments from their pasts and their homelands, deepening their bond as they open up about their experiences living in the United States. The Performance Project brings people together to create theater and visual art through multigenerational collaborations. Their members participate in artistic training, intergenerational mentoring and leadership development. They claim a public voice, engage audiences in dialogue about oppression and liberation, and celebrate our humanity and connection through the arts.

10 a.m.–noon; 1–4:45 p.m. in Special Collections, Neilson Library, third floor
Come meet the Cromwells in Special Collections on Cromwell Day! The Cromwell family has close ties and great significance to Smith College. Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900, was the first African American graduate, while Adelaide McGuinn Cromwell, class of 1940, was the first African American faculty member as an instructor in sociology. 

Smith College Special Collections preserves and provides access to the Cromwell family papers. Visit the third floor of Neilson Library from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:45 p.m. on Cromwell Day to explore this remarkable collection, including books Otelia read, Adelaide’s photographs and baby book, family diplomas, correspondence, and so much more. 

At 2 p.m., we are honored that Anna H. Davis will be joining us to share her memories and answer your questions about her family. Mrs. Davis is a descendant of the historic McGuinn and Cromwell families—including her great-aunt Otelia Cromwell and cousin Adelaide McGuinn Cromwell. A lifelong genealogy enthusiast, Anna worked alongside her sister, Mary H. Lightfoot, to research and preserve their family's legacy. A Cheyney University graduate, Anna is a retired Philadelphia special education teacher, former department chair, and former Vice President of the Board for Radnor A Better Chance, Inc.

Target audience: everyone

10 a.m.–4 p.m., Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center, first floor
Drop by the Meridians table at the Campus Center on Cromwell Day! Make a custom button, chat with our team, and explore Meridians’ rich legacy of publishing groundbreaking scholarship by and about women of color—including our history in Black Feminisms. We’d love to see you!

Target audience: students

11 a.m.–4 p.m., Cunningham Center, Smith College Museum of Art
The Smith College Museum of Art invites everyone on Cromwell Day to enjoy the current exhibition, Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as a space for reflection, respite, and joy. In addition, there will be a student-organized pop-up exhibition in the Cunningham Center from 1 to 4 p.m.

Target audience: everyone

6:30–8:30 p.m., Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center, first floor
The SGA Curriculum Committee will be tabling to gather student perspectives across a variety of majors on the proposed required course on race at Smith College. We aim to understand how students see this course fitting into their overall academic experience, including how it might complement existing departmental curricula and build upon current conversations about race across campus. Through these discussions, we hope to gauge student opinions on the content and structure of the proposed course, its potential integration across disciplines, and the broader importance of incorporating race theory into academic settings at Smith. This initiative seeks to ensure that student voices from diverse academic backgrounds inform the development and implementation of the race curriculum.

Target audience: everyone

• Karolina Suarez Aldarondo ’28
• Kim Alston, Center for Religious and Spiritual Life
• Elisabeth Armstrong, Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
• Erica Banz, Events Management Office
• Jasmine Bhakta ’27
• Gwen Dwyer, Office for Equity & Inclusion
• Irene Ham ’28
• Queen Lanier, Office for Equity and Inclusion
• Adaeze Ogunedo, Office of Admission
• Jode Redding ’29
• Shawn Reming, Smith Office for the Arts
• Davis Rivera, Licensed Journeyman Electrician
• ej seibert, Office for Equity & Inclusion
• Cai Sherley, Office of Multicultural Affairs
• Irhe Sohn, East Asian Languages and Cultures
• Barbara Solow, Office of Communications & Marketing

Smith College has confronted racism since it opened its doors in 1875. As at many other colleges and universities, racial hostility intensified in the late 1980s and early 1990s, becoming more frequent, more visible, and more damaging.¹

The history documented here provides context for how Smith has, over time, responded to incidents of racism, including creating what is now known as Cromwell Day.² This account is offered as a contribution to shared understanding and ongoing dialogue about ways that Smith can continue to live and lean into its values of equity and inclusion.

Concrete steps to address the campus climate were particularly urgent in the early 1990s, following a series of disturbing incidents. In a 1993 report to President Mary Maples Dunn titled “A Record of Racist Notes at Smith College,” Assistant Dean for Minority Affairs Marjorie Richardson enumerated some of these acts. In November 1986, an inscription was discovered on the steps of Lilly Hall—then home to the Mwangi Multicultural Center—that addressed students of African, Asian, and Latine descent with the most heinous epithets imaginable, telling them to “quit complaining or get out.” Also at the time, students of all racial identities were calling for the college to divest from the South African government to protest against its system of apartheid and for the college to require racial literacy education. The report added that from 1987 to 1989 at least nine “threatening and racist notes” targeted individual domestic and international students of African and Asian descent.³ In January 1989, two white students received homophobic notes.⁴ That fall, antisemitic graffiti appeared in the Smith College bookstore.⁵

The community demanded action.

On Jan. 15, 1989, President Dunn and the board of trustees established a Civil Rights Policy and created a position to oversee it. The goal was to sustain “a community that respects and promotes diversity and individualism.”⁶ From 1988 until 1991, Dean of the Faculty Robert Merritt sponsored the Fund for a More Inclusive Curriculum to “encourage the study of world cultures and American cultures beyond the traditional focus on Western Europe and white America.”⁷

Students and faculty also called for collective listening and learning. The Society Organized Against Racism (SOAR)—composed of students, staff, and faculty and led by Professor Tom Riddell—suggested “annual programs of community education.”⁸ Concerned Students of All Colors and the Committee on Community Policy agreed. “This is consistent with the goals of the Smith Design for Institutional Diversity approved by the board of trustees in October 1988 to make Smith an institution of higher education that values diversity, promotes civility, and combats racism,” Riddell explained.⁹ At the all-college meeting on May 1, 1989, President Dunn announced the cancellation of afternoon classes on a day the following fall for the college to focus on community education regarding “racism and diversity.”¹⁰ This day became known as Otelia Cromwell Day.

¹Joseph Berger, “Deep Racial Divisions Persist In New Generation at College,” New York Times, 22 May 1989.
²Proactive efforts to address racism and other forms of discrimination include the strategic plan Toward Racial Justice and work guided by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) framework to advance racial equity. Training of students, staff, and faculty in various arenas including the following can also be ameliorative: Everyday Tools for Equity and Inclusion and Leaders for Equity-Centered and Action-Based Design (LEAD).
³Marjorie Richardson, “A Record of Racist Notes,” spring 1993, pp. 2–3, Black Students’ Alliance records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00308, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
⁴Ibid., p. 3. For a history of responses including “Celebration of Sisterhood” and “The Quad Vigil of 1992,” see Juli Grace, history, Celebration Records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00326, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
⁵Bethany Spooner, “Otelia Cromwell Symposium Neglects Issue of Anti-Semitism,” Smith College Sophian, 16 Nov. 1989, p. 1.
⁶“Smith College Civil Rights Policy qtd. in Dennis Hudson, “Report on the Smith Design,” 28 Jan. 1993, p. 1, Self-Study records, College Archives,CA-MS-01059, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
⁷Marilyn Schuster, “Report on the Fund for a More Inclusive Curriculum,” June 1990, qtd. in Hudson, p. 9.
⁸SOAR, “Summary of Activities for 1990–1991” qtd. in Hudson, p. 7. 
⁹Debra Bradley, “Racism and Diversity are Subjects of Symposium,” 31 Oct. 1989, p. 1, Office of College Relations records, College Archives, CA-MS-01050, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
¹⁰Ibid.

The Otelia Cromwell Symposium on Racism took place on November 9, 1989. The event program described it as a “special day of talks, workshops, films, and entertainment, in honor of Smith’s first known African American graduate, Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900. The symposium continues the college’s efforts to combat racism and to create a diverse and multicultural community.”¹¹

Riddell chaired the first Cromwell Day committee, which included 11 staff and faculty members and six students. President Dunn invited Student Government Association President Farah Pandith ’90 to serve along with students from the following organizations: Asian Students’ Association, Black Students’ Alliance, International Students’ Organization, Korean Students of Smith, Nosotras, and South African Students of Smith.¹²

It was President Dunn’s decision to name the day after Otelia Cromwell. She wrote in a memo to Riddell on August 9, 1989, “As you perhaps know, Otelia Cromwell was the first African American to graduate from Smith, and it seemed to me to be a good idea to name our conference for her.” Susan Nowlan AC ’94, a student at the time, confirmed in a March 29, 1994, interview with Dunn that it was the president’s goal to connect the day “to our own history, in order to make a clear statement that Smith had been racially diverse for a long time.” And further, “that the education of women of color was something of long-standing importance at Smith College.”¹³

Initially, the committee considered inviting a keynote speaker. Notes from September 18, 1989, list novelist Maxine Hong Kingston, writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, journalist Connie Chung, attorney and activist Elaine Jones, and author Paule Marshall as possibilities.¹⁴ Instead, the committee decided to host a panel of Smith-affiliated speakers. The “keynote session,” which took place in John M. Greene Hall, featured President Dunn in conversation with students, faculty, staff, and alums on “The State of the College: Celebrating Diversity, Confronting Racism.”¹⁵ Professor Taitetsu Unno, who participated on the planning committee and panel, suggested the tagline “Celebrating Diversity, Confronting Racism,” which also graced the poster for the day, designed by John Eue of College Relations.¹⁶ Panelists answered Dunn’s questions about their own “personal observations of racism” and whether racism can be “reversed by education.”¹⁷

Workshops focused on an array of topics, including Black athletes, the “many faces of Latinas,” Asian Americans as the so-called model minority, educator Jaime Escalante’s efforts to teach calculus in Los Angeles, Guatemalan immigrants, “the American Indian,” and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. At an evening session, President Dunn offered “An Assessment of the Otelia Cromwell Day Symposium.” Students, staff, and faculty then had the opportunity to attend three performances: an Indian classical dance featuring Ranjanaa Devi, a stand-up comedy routine by Phil Nee, and a jazz concert by Semenya McCord. Refreshments were served at 10 p.m. in the Gamut.

In the days following the symposium, Dunn and Riddell received several notes of appreciation from students, staff, and faculty. They also fielded two notable critiques. Some members of the community faulted the planning committee for not addressing antisemitism. Riddell apologized and said that “the lack of a workshop on antisemitism was an error of omission … especially in the wake of the discovery of antisemitic graffiti in the Smith College bookstore” earlier that fall.¹⁸ On a more personal note, Adelaide Cromwell ’40—Otelia Cromwell’s niece, a fellow alum, and Smith’s first Black faculty member—took issue with the use of her aunt’s name. In a letter to the Smith Alumnae Quarterly in spring 1990, she wrote, “I am enthusiastically supportive of any endeavor to combat racism at Smith College or anywhere else, but I cannot for the life of me understand why that must be tied to the life of Otelia Cromwell, simply because she was Black.”¹⁹ Adelaide Cromwell wanted her aunt to be honored as “a scholar and an exceptional teacher” in her own right. Over the years, more has been done to celebrate Otelia’s accomplishments, including the creation of a video about her life and legacy, and Adelaide attended many subsequent Cromwell Days in person. Planning committee notes from April 30, 1991, reported that Adelaide “now gives her consent to using her aunt’s name.”²⁰

¹¹Otelia Cromwell Symposium on Racism program, 9 Nov. 1989, box 182, folder 8, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
¹²Memo from Jane Pafford to Mary Maples Dunn, 21 Jul. 1989, box 182, folder 8, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. For Farah Pandith’s account of her role in the first Cromwell Day, see her essay “Light in Times of Darkness,” Smith Quarterly, 18 Aug. 2025, https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/light-times-darkness.
¹³Susan Nowlan, “Otelia Cromwell Day: A Question of Celebration,” 1994, p. 7, Student papers and theses collection, College Archives, CA-MS-01113, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
¹⁴Cromwell Committee meeting notes, 18 Sep. 1989, box 182, folder 8, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
¹⁵Otelia Cromwell Symposium on Racism program, 9. Nov. 1989.
¹⁶Cromwell Committee meeting notes, 18 Sep. 1989. Note that College Relations is now known as Communications and Marketing.
¹⁷Mary Maples Dunn, notes for the Otelia Cromwell Symposium Panel, 9 Nov. 1989, box 182, folder 8, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
¹⁸Bethany Spooner, “Otelia Cromwell Symposium Neglects Issue of Anti-Semitism,” Smith College Sophian, 16 Nov. 1989, p. 1.
¹⁹Qtd. in Nowlan, pp. 18.
²⁰Karen Pfeifer and Mary Martineau’s notes for the Otelia Cromwell Planning Committee, 30 Apr. 1991, box 182, folder 10, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.

In 1989, however, the nature and promise of future Cromwell Days was far from settled. On a Dec. 8, 1989, typewritten memo to the planning committee, Riddell scribbled a simple question: “Repeat it?”²¹

For guidance, President Dunn turned to the Committee on Academic Priorities (CAP) and the Committee on Community Policy (CCP). Composed of eight professors and three administrators—two of whom were nonvoting—CAP was charged with reviewing “the curriculum and the policies of all administrative and faculty committees in matters of educational policy.”²² Populated by students, staff, faculty, alums, and Northampton community leaders, the CCP’s mandate was to “encourage diversity, free intellectual inquiry, and responsible attitudes toward the large issues of the day.”²³ The committees deliberated among their own members and consulted others on questions of timing and scope: Should the event be held annually or every other year? Should it take place in the fall or be combined with Rally Day during the spring semester? Should the focus be on racism or should it be expanded to include other forms of discrimination?

CAP recommended that Cromwell Day take place every other year and be combined with Rally Day.²⁴ The CCP advised an annual fall event of expanded scope. A memo to President Dunn formally explained, “The observance should emphasize the companion themes of (1) resisting discrimination in all of its forms and (2) celebrating diversity in all of its forms. We intend by this recommendation that the spirit of Otelia Cromwell Day will embrace the full range of discrimination and diversity acknowledged by the college’s Civil Rights Policy and Nondiscrimination Statement, without losing the concerns and goals of racial and cultural diversity specified by the Smith Design for Institutional Diversity.”²⁵

On Nov. 16, 1990, President Dunn communicated to the CCP that “the plan to put Otelia Cromwell Day and Rally Day together isn't working … too many objections.” She did, however, request that Cromwell Day take place in the spring.²⁶ Dunn accepted the recommendation to broaden the scope of the program. Hence, that academic year’s Cromwell Day took place on Feb. 12, 1991, and focused on “building a community characterized by an appreciation for differences in race, class, religion, and sexual orientation.” Like the first Cromwell Day, this one featured a panel discussion. Workshops focused on broad topics such as issues of oppression, religious pluralism, classism, homophobia, and heterosexism. A concert by the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble closed the day.²⁷

At its debriefing meeting on April 30, 1991, the CCP recognized that “The first Otelia Cromwell Day was organized as a response to student demands for a mandatory class in racism after episodes of racial harassment which occurred on campus. There was some concern that last year’s program was too broad-based and should return to a symposium exclusively dealing with the issue of racism.”²⁸ Meeting notes also recorded a suggestion to rename the day because it “no longer deals exclusively with racial issues.”²⁹

Ultimately, the CCP decided to retain the name unless Dunn objected, and recommended that Cromwell Day be observed annually in the fall.³⁰ The Oct. 3, 1991, celebration featured a keynote speech by linguist, educator, and actor Doris Leader Charge (Lakota) on “Preserving and Transmitting Native American Culture.” Workshops covered topics with titles such as “A Puerto Rican Reading of West Side Story,” “Perspectives of a Lesbian Alumna,” and “A Jew and a Gentile in Dialogue: Being Allies for Each Other.” The evening performance starred actor and director Ossie Davis and actress Ruby Dee, who blended “music, poetry, and dramatic readings interpreting the history of the ‘minority’ experience in America.”³¹

Alas, racist incidents did not abate. From 1990 to 1992, students received several more notes, a decapitated doll, and a table tent calling them “trained canines of color.”³² Over the years, Cromwell Day continued to focus on understanding and confronting racism, though the aperture sometimes expanded. What had been a symposium “on racism” in 1989 became a symposium “on diversity” in 1993.³³ In 1997, the planning committee chose the theme “Language and Communication Across Cultures,” and in 1998 the college invited local schoolchildren to attend a Cromwell Day on “Celebrating Children Across Cultures.” The 1998 program declared, “For more than a decade, Otelia Cromwell Day has been instrumental in challenging our community to think critically about the meaning of cultural pluralism in our society. We have confronted issues of racism, discussed the meaning of culture, and celebrated the traditions of many.”³⁴

The Cromwell Day planning committee has always included students (drawn from Unity Organizations with the assistance of the Office of Multicultural Affairs), staff (fulfilling essential functions and offering staff perspectives), and faculty (chosen in consultation with Faculty Council). Over time, the administrative leadership moved from the Committee on Community Policy to the Office of Minority Affairs to the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, and eventually, to the Office for Equity and Inclusion. Occasionally, leaders from other units have been called to chair in times of need. For instance, Dean of the Smith College School for Social Work Marianne Yoshioka led the committee in 2018.

Typically, the Cromwell Day Committee begins its work each March by assessing the campus climate and trying to anticipate what the community might need by November. Deciding on a theme usually precedes identifying a keynote speaker. For instance, in 2022, the college’s renewed focus on racial literacy led to the theme “Ignorance Is Not Bliss: The Necessity of Teaching and Learning About Race.” Crystal Fleming, the author of How to Be Less Stupid about Race and now a professor at Smith, addressed this theme directly in her keynote speech. Recognizing the impact of the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2025, the committee invited Farah Pandith ’90, an international diplomat known for her bridge-building work.³⁵

Through the years, Cromwell Day speakers have represented many different fields of expertise and held diverse identities.

Despite earlier requests, the decision to cancel classes all day to make time for expanded programming did not happen until 2020.³⁶ Beginning that year, the planning committee scheduled wellness events in the morning such as “rest to rise” programs by Professor Benita Jackson, poster sessions to share data from campus climate surveys, and updates on equity and inclusion work at Smith, as well as other workshops. Plenary sessions continued to take place after lunchtime; workshops were offered in the afternoon; and artistic performances ended the day. Since then, Smith has continued with a daylong schedule of programming.

²¹Memo from Tom Riddell to the Otelia Cromwell Symposium on Racism Planning Committee, 8 Dec. 1989, box 2, Tom Riddell papers, College Archives, CA-MS-01191, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²²Code of Faculty Governance at Smith College, Aug. 1989, p. 8. https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=013060085753386553107:qfvmbgt-eim&q=https://www.smith.edu/sites/default/files/media/Documents/Provost/Code_of_Faculty_Governance.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi1i5_17pqSAxXxGVkFHXS0Jw8QFnoECAMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3iXc8j_A0-oLxU4jL_-pR0&arm=e&fexp=121491260,121491258
²³Committee on Community Policy, “Report to the Smith Community on Efforts to Promote Racial Awareness,” Apr. 1987.
²⁴Memo from Robert Merritt to Mary Maples Dunn, 2 May 1990, box 182, folder 9, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²⁵Memo from the Committee on Community Policy to Mary Maples Dunn, 28 Feb. 1990, box 182, folder 10, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²⁶Memo from Mary Maples Dunn to Pat Skarda and Bob Merritt, 16 Nov. 1990, box 182, folder 9, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²⁷Otelia Cromwell Day program 12 Feb. 1991, box 182, folder 9, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²⁸CCP notes by Karen Pfeifer and Mary Martineau, 30 Apr. 1991, box 182, folder 10, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
²⁹Ibid.
³⁰Ibid.
³¹Otelia Cromwell Symposium program, 3 Oct. 1991, box 182, folder 10, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
³²Richardson., p. 5.
³³Otelia Cromwell Day Symposium program, 2 Nov. 1993, Center for Religious and Spiritual Life records, College Archives, CA-MS-1057, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. 
³⁴Otelia Cromwell Symposia program, 1–3 Nov. 1998, box 45, Center for Religious and Spiritual Life records, College Archives, CA-MS-1057, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
³⁵The planning committee for Cromwell Day 2025 heard, particularly from students, that our choice of Pandith as keynote speaker missed the mark. Though about a hundred community members engaged with her in a question-and-answer opportunity following the plenary session and some apologized for walking out ahead of her speech, a subsequent town hall organized by and for students indicated that more conversation is needed. To that end, I was gratified that the leaders of the town hall, Salma Baksh ‘28 and Karolina Suarez Aldarondo ‘28, met with me, presented notes, suggested actions, and listened to my brief account of the origin and purpose of Cromwell Day. They asked me how can more members of our community better understand the history and evolution of this longstanding tradition. In the spirit of transparency and shared learning, and in consultation with President Sarah Willie-LeBreton, I spent the two months in the College archives researching and drafting this account of the history of Cromwell Day. 
³⁶Summary minutes of the Committee on Academic Policy, 18 Apr. 1990, box 182, folder 9, Office of the President Mary Maples Dunn Files, College Archives, CA-MS-00073, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts; memo from CCP to Mary Maples Dunn, 28 Feb. 1990, folder 10; and memo from CCP to Mary Maples Dunn, 20 Feb. 1992, folder 11.

Naming the day after Otelia Cromwell continues to anchor Cromwell Day as a reflection on the transformative power of education and diversity, as well as a celebration of Black excellence. Otelia herself went on to earn a doctorate in English from Yale University. She authored important books on Thomas Heywood and Lucretia Mott, and edited Readings from Negro Authors. Since Adelaide’s death in 2019, Cromwell Day has honored her legacy as Smith’s first Black faculty member and her accomplishments as co-founder of the African Studies Center at Boston University and author of The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class, 1750–1950.

At Cromwell Day in 2009, poet Nikky Finney debuted “Maven,” a three-part poem that delves into Otelia Cromwell’s characteristics as a daughter, scholar, and writer, praising her dignity, sagacity, and fierceness. “We herald your bright hallmark of firsts,” Finney writes in reference to Cromwell’s identities as the first Black graduate of Smith and the first Black woman to earn a doctorate at Yale. The poem does not directly address Cromwell’s encounters with racism, such as the fact that she boarded with Professor Julia Caverno downtown rather than on campus with other students—an arrangement that reflected unspoken but certain exclusion. Neither does it mention Cromwell’s advocacy on behalf of Carrie Lee, class of 1917, who, unlike her, was explicitly denied on-campus housing. Thanks to Cromwell and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Lee was eventually assigned a room in Albright House. Finney’s poem alludes to these and other challenges that Cromwell faced and overcame with the line “You gray beautifully—but early.”³⁷

Cromwell Day also honors Black history with the recent tradition of singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” usually performed by the student group Blackappella as part of the plenary session. Written by brothers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamund Johnson, the song has sustained activists in the struggle for liberation since 1900. Sometimes known as the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” gained renewed prominence and national use after the murder of George Floyd in 2021. The struggle for liberation benefits, of course, from broad participation. Timothy Askew, the author of Cultural Hegemony and African American Patriotism: An Analysis of the Song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” explains that the Johnsons wrote the song without reference to a specific racial identity and addresses all Americans. Marc Lamont Hill, a CUNY professor of urban education and ethnic studies, adds, “It’s a black national anthem, but it’s also a quintessential American song because of its message of fighting for freedom.”³⁸

In keeping with Cromwell Day’s original tagline to both confront racism and celebrate diversity, Cromwell Day continues to uplift overlooked histories. In 1989, the identities of other Smith graduates from various backgrounds were not well known. To remedy this lack of awareness, President John Connolly asked College Archivist Nanci Young to identify some of these early graduates in 2001. Since then, the college has honored the following alums with a slideshow carousel in the Goldstein Lounge, as the namesakes of the Friedman Apartments, and as the photographic subjects of a gallery titled “Our Predecessors: Smith’s Earliest Graduates of Color” in Seelye Hall:

This portrait gallery is another step in meeting student requests for increasing awareness of alums of color and their accomplishments. As psychologist Claude Steele’s research shows, the presence or absence of environmental cues—such as building names and portraits of people who look like you—can affect one’s sense of belonging.³⁹ No college of its age, including Smith, was designed for the diversity of students, staff, and faculty of today. Hence, we must reflect on our past and present in order to build a more just and inclusive future.

³⁷Nikky Finney, “Maven,” 2009, https://www.smith.edu/news-events/events/cromwell-day#:~:text=2009%20Ni…
³⁸Liane Membis, “Professor at historically black college questions 'black national anthem,'” CNN, 2010, https://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/21/black.national.anthem/index.html.
³⁹Claude Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (New York: Norton, 2010), p. 145.

Cromwell Day was never meant to stand alone in the college’s efforts to address racism. From the beginning, students, staff, and faculty demanded systemic change: a process for hearing grievances and holding people accountable, sustained leadership around issues related to equity and inclusion, and a diverse curriculum. Smith has made progress on all of these desiderata—in the adoption of a Civil Rights Policy, the establishment of both the Office for Civil Rights Compliance and the Office for Equity and Inclusion, the adoption of the strategic plan Toward Racial Justice, and the development of many new courses and hiring of new professors focused on “the study of world cultures and American cultures beyond the traditional focus on Western Europe and white America.”⁴⁰ But the work is incomplete and must continue.

In addition, the work must be informed by not only our traditions, values, and principles but also the people who live and learn here now. As I wrote in my 2025 reflection, “Transformative Inclusion at Smith College”:

I have given much thought to the question of how one could define the term “inclusion.” For instance, inclusion could mean conformity—that is, requiring an individual to meet a dominant standard in order to earn belonging from a central power. We might call this provisional inclusion. Another kind of inclusion, however, would enable individuals to bring their whole selves into an ecosystem—say, a college—and their contributions would be welcomed as a way to change the ecosystem itself. We might call this transformative inclusion, which expects that every student, faculty, and staff member will transform the institution—not merely assimilate into it.⁴¹

The conversations sparked by Cromwell Day—then and now—remind us that learning and dialogue are always unfinished. They ask something of us: curiosity, care, concern, courage, and a willingness to sometimes sit with discomfort. Yet, they are also our greatest strengths because they affirm our commitment to honoring the full diversity of our community, knowing that by doing so we become—as President Sarah Willie-LeBreton has said—”better scholars, teachers, and humans.”⁴²

If you have input for the Cromwell Day planning committee, please email oei@smith.edu. 

⁴⁰Hudson, p. 9.
⁴¹Floyd Cheung, “Transformative Inclusion at Smith College,” Smith Today, 21 Mar. 2025, https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/transformative-inclusion-smith-college
⁴²Sarah Willie-LeBreton, Remarks to Alumnae Association Board of Directors, Fall 2025.