The First Girls’ Debating Club: Creating a Legacy at Oberlin College, 1835–1935

The first college women’s debating society in the United States developed in the context of a grand nineteenth-century experiment. In 1833, it was “generally frowned upon” for institutions of higher learning to admit students of color, and a “somewhat shocking departure” to admit women students, yet in Oberlin, Ohio, the founders of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute did both.¹ Oberlin’s women students then set themselves apart by pursuing spaces for the sustained practice of argumentation and debate. Brief accounts of Oberlin’s pioneer debating society circulate in a variety of academic texts, including feminist anthologies,² public address textbooks,³ rhetoric and composition histories,⁴