Hannah Baumgardner’s journey at Spelman College began long before she was accepted into the institution.
From a young age, she’d heard countless stories about the ladies in white dresses. Her mother was one of them. And so was her mother’s mother — and her mother’s mother.
“I was surrounded by Spelman from the get-go. I remember growing up and seeing Spelman College pennants and dolls and cups,” Hannah says. “I feel like I was born into it.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
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.’”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
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 I were both so elated to find out that Hannah made that decision. I stepped back. I wasn’t like my grandmother and my mother, where it was pretty much a dictatorship,” Cindy jokes.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Hannah also took after the matriarchs of the family by joining the Granddaughters Club, an organization formed to preserve Spelman’s traditions. It’s open only to students whose mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and cousins.
While she doesn’t yet know if she’ll encourage her future children to continue the Spelman lineage, she’s honored to stand on the shoulders of those who came before her.
“I’m just enjoying it for myself right now,” Hannah says. “I think the foundation of an HBCU education, regardless of where you go, is essential though. But it should be the number one.”
Some traditions have changed since the family’s first Spelman student stepped foot onto the campus. Today, ladies are no longer required to wear white gloves in public nor forbidden to wear earrings.
But the passion for advocacy and community is the same.
“It’s easy to pinpoint the Civil Rights Movement, which my great grandma and grandma lived through, and the moments of the ‘80s and ‘90s that my mom lived through,” says Hannah, who’s double majoring in sociology and anthropology, and Spanish. “But I feel like the spirit of being undaunted, fierce, driven and pretty much formidable still exists now.”
“If there’s something with housing, we will speak up about it,” she continues. “If there’s something with financial aid, students will speak up about it. If students feel slightly uncomfortable on the campus because of something that happened between Morehouse and Spelman, students will speak up about it. ‘No’ does not fit right with a Spelmanite.”
Spelman will celebrate that very commitment to service and excellence this week during Founders Day. Every year on April 11, students, alumnae, faculty and staff put their school spirit on full display to mark the college’s birthday. This year, Spelman, which the U.S. News & World Report ranked as the nation’s best HBCU, turns 143.
From a special convocation to a cake-cutting ceremony, the campus will be buzzing with many activities. But for Hannah, her mother and grandmother, Founders Day is every day.
“Spelman is so deeply embedded into this family. We’re always talking about its history and its legacy and its impact. We’re constantly grateful for Spelman, and it’s not just on one day,” Hannah says.
Cindy says she and Hanks-Brooks will make donate money to the school to honor its143rd birthday. She says growing up watching her grandmother Lula write an annual check to the institution inspired her to continue the tradition.
“We bleed blue,” Cindy adds in reference to Spelman’s official color.
