Wanda Little Fenimore ’06 to discuss research in Randolph lecture

Wanda Fenimore ’06

In 1950, Elizabeth Waring denounced segregation in a fiery speech delivered to the Coming Street YWCA in Charleston, South Carolina.

It was part of a rhetorical campaign launched by Waring, a white, northern socialite, and her husband, federal Judge J. Waties Waring, to condemn white supremacy and segregation in the years leading up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Wanda Little Fenimore ’06, a rhetorical scholar, has spent the past several years locating and excavating Waring’s speeches, which exposed the incongruity between American democratic ideals and the reality for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.

She’ll discuss the Warings’ campaign and responses to it at Randolph in the lecture “Elizabeth Waring: White Ally in the Black Freedom Struggle,” scheduled for 5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 30, in Nichols Theatre.

Fenimore’s research focuses on the legacy of slavery in the south and efforts to uphold and dismantle white supremacy.

She received her bachelor’s degree from the College, a master’s from Hollins University, and a doctorate from Florida State University. Her work has been published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Carolinas Communication Annual, and the anthology Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection.

Fenimore is also the author of The Rhetorical Road to Brown v. Board of Education: Elizabeth and Waties Waring’s Campaign and Nikki Haley’s Lessons from the New South.

Her lecture at Randolph is sponsored by the Randolph College Campus Events Committee and the Department of Media and Culture. It is free and open to the public.