Queen of the campus

Just before the beginning of the Fall 1955 semester, four Black students from Houston took a two-day train ride to Iowa City to enroll at what was then the State University of Iowa (SUI). Among the four was 17-year-old Dora Lee Martin, who had graduated from segregated Jack Yates High School the spring before.

They would be among the 100-150 Black students at the University of Iowa at that time. Since the end of World War II, the unwritten rule that prohibited Black students from living in campus residence halls had been lifted. Consequently, Ms. Martin was able to move into Currier Hall.

Ms. Martin had picked Iowa because of her plans to major in theater. She had both talent and beauty. The year before, she had been selected as queen at her high school. Outside of class at Iowa, she sang in a small combo that performed in Iowa City.

Recognizing her talent and appearance, Currier’s residents voted to nominate Ms. Martin for the annual Miss SUI competition in the Fall 1955 semester. As she would write in an essay written for Invisible Hawkeyes, the 2016 history of Black athletes and artists at the University of Iowa (edited by former Iowa faculty members Lena and Michael Hill), her candidacy was buoyed by the teamwork expressed by her fellow hall residents in planning and executing a campaign to be Miss SUI.

That campaign took place in December 1955 and featured performances by Ms. Martin singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” a popular song at that time. Because Miss SUI was selected by a vote of University male students, Ms. Martin’s campaign performances took place in men’s residence halls and fraternities across campus. Photographs of her singing show her surrounded by a small contingent of her Black sisters and a room full of young white men, many of them clearly enjoying Ms. Martin’s performance.

Despite being the only Black woman among 29 contestants, Ms. Martin won the election and was crowned Miss SUI at the Fire and Ice Ball on Dec. 10, 1955. News spread quickly of Ms. Martin’s title and appeared in approximately 300 newspapers in the U.S. as well as papers in India, Denmark, Great Britain, and Congo. The fact that a Black student won the contest at a predominantly white university was the featured theme of these stories.

Although Ms. Martin’s fame — and the university’s — spread widely and quickly, the University did not embrace her as Miss SUI. Within a week of her crowning, the Daily Iowan quoted confusing statements made by student leaders that Ms. Martin would not be representing Iowa at the Rose Bowl Parade. When students returned from the holiday break in January, opportunities to participate in special events as Miss SUI did not materialize. In other words, despite her international fame, Ms. Martin was made invisible by the university.

President Virgil Hancher, responded to a letter congratulating him on being president of a university that would elect a Black woman as its queen, responded by saying that the election was a “student event” and required no comment from him. In the same letter, he described the media coverage as a “hullabaloo,” thereby rejecting the widespread public attention that had highlighted the University’s pioneering step in electing Ms. Martin.

In a sense, therefore, the UI student body was a step ahead of the University’s administration, including its student government, in valuing Ms. Martin’s talent without reference to her race. And through its student body, UI was ahead of other universities, especially in the South, where Black students were not welcome at all. But the University’s administration did not see this distinction to be important.

On Oct. 21, 2016, sixty-one years after being named Miss SUI, UI President Bruce Harreld apologized on behalf of the University for its neglectful treatment of Dora Lee Martin after being named Miss SUI.

Dora Lee Martin went on to marry Henry Berry, one of the first Black baseball and basketball players at Iowa. Dora Lee completed her undergraduate degree at Roosevelt University in Chicago, earned a Master of Social Work degree at Rutgers, and completed an illustrious career in social work in New Jersey.

Sadly, Dora Lee Martin Berry passed away, at age 86, on Oct. 5, 2024, in Massachusetts.

In becoming Miss SUI, she was a pioneer for justice not just at the University of Iowa, but nationally. Her bravery and talent enabled her to break through the barriers that had kept Black students at universities like Iowa in the shadows. The fact that her election as Miss SUI was widely publicized is indicative of the fact that Black women were unlikely to be so recognized at predominantly at white universities in the United States, not just the University of Iowa.

Her legacy and contribution therefore should be recognized by the University much as it has already done by honoring Duke Slater, Iowa’s first Black All American athlete, by naming the field at Kinnick Stadium after him in 2021.

Charles Connerly is an historian and urban planner who retired from the University of Iowa after serving thirteen years as director and professor of the School of Planning and Public Affairs. Prior to that he taught urban planning at Florida State University for 27 years. He is currently writing a book titled “Iowa in the 1960s: Politics, Public Policy, and Governance in an Era of Change.”