Margaret Clapp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Margaret Antoinette Clapp (April 10, 1910 - 1974) was an American scholar and educator.
She was born in East Orange, New Jersey and graduated from East Orange High School in 1926 and Wellesley College in 1930. She taught English literature at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City for twelve years while working on her Masters degree, which she obtained from Columbia University in 1937.
During and after World War II, she taught history at City College of New York, Douglass College, Columbia University, and Brooklyn College. Her doctoral dissertation at Columbia grew into the biography Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow published in 1947 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1948.
While she was president of Wellesley College from 1949 until her retirement in 1966, the college's resources and facilities were expanded substantially. Clapp was a strong advocate of careers for women.
After leaving Wellesley, Clapp served briefly as administrator of Lady Doak, a women's college in Mandurai, India, then as United States cultural attaché to India, then as minister-councilor of public affairs in the United States Information Agency until her retirement in 1971. The library at Wellesley is named for her.
