Zoom in and check out the banner on the young woman in the tree. Votes for Women! (I’m still not totally convinced this was a good idea.)
They are all members of Rice’s first graduating class, I believe. The one in the tree is in fact the first woman to graduate from Rice, Hattie Lel Red. Her diploma hangs on a wall in the back room of the Woodson. On the left is Ruth Robinson, who would marry Rice faculty member Joseph Pound of the Mechanical Engineering Department after graduation. I’m not sure of the name of the young lady on the right, but the one in the middle, who’s sort of yucking it up, is one of the famous Waggaman sisters. I think it’s Adele. (I’ll talk more about the Waggamans later. They were really something.) I wonder if they had been at a demonstration–they certainly seem to be having a good time.
