Anita Florence Hemmings

Anita Florence Hemmings (June 8, 1872 – October 15, 1960 ) was known as the first African American woman to graduate from Vassar College. Anita was raised as an Episcopalian.

Siblings

Frederick John Hemmings (né Frederic Henderson Hemmings; 1873–1956), earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT in 1897.

Children

Ellen Parker Love (1905–1995), a 1927 graduate of Vassar. On June 6, 1934, in Manhattan, she married Charles Beckinton Atkin (1906–1987). Barbara Hope Love (1907–2007). On June 9, 1930, in Manhattan, she married William Adair Hurt (1907–1965). They later divorced. Andrew Jackson Love, Jr. (1911–1982), jazz musician. He attended the Horace Mann School until around 1927, then transferred to the Mount Herman School in Northfield, Massachusetts, graduating around 1930.

In 1997, Vassar African-American studies students petitioned college president Frances D. Fergusson to recognize Hemmings at that year's centennial celebration. Writing about it in Vassar Quarterly, Olivia Mancini, a local journalist, said this recognition "brought [Hemmings'] graduation and presence to a level of honor that it should have had a hundred years ago." Vassar has acknowledged Anita Hemmings as the first African American to graduate the college, and noted that for almost all of her college career, she was thought to be white.

In popular culture In November 2017, it was announced that Zendaya will produce and star in a biopic of Hemmings' life titled A White Lie, based on the 2016 novel The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe. This explores Hemmings' life in a fictional way.