The Spelman legacy in her family runs deep. Within the last nine decades, nearly 20 cousins, aunts and other relatives have also graduated from Atlanta’s historically Black women’s college. Hannah, a 19-year-old, fourth-generation Spelman student, will be next when she completes her degree in 2026.
Her late great grandmother, Lula Faye Hanks, helped lay the foundation, although she wasn’t the first from the family to graduate from the institution.
Lula learned about Spelman from family members, including her own mother, who went when it was just an elementary and high school. When it evolved into a college, she continued the Spelman tradition.
In 1941, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French. She later earned a master’s degree in education from New York University, but Spelman was always her pride and joy.
“I was very influenced by my mother,” says Marcia Hanks-Brooks, Hannah’s grandmother. “My mother told me, ‘My check is at Spelman. You’re on your own if you wish to go elsewhere.’”
Despite the not-so-gentle nudge, Marcia, who also attended Spelman’s now-defunct nursery school in the 1940s and graduated from the college in 1966, grew to love and appreciate the institution for its rich history and traditions. Like her mother Lula, she didn’t entertain her daughter’s other college options.
“I did not want to go…but I am so glad I ended up there,” says Cindy B. Baumgardner, Hannah’s mother. “When you’re walking around The Oval, when you’re going to Giles Hall and when you’re walking in and out of [the] Cosby [building], you experience that extraordinary sisterhood that you really don’t get anywhere else.”
Both Cindy, who graduated in 1990, and Marcia, a member of the class of 1966, were crossing their fingers that Hannah would follow in their footsteps.
“My mother and…
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