May 1st, 1915 dated the first annual May Fete celebration on Southwestern’s campus. Initiated, organized, directed, and led by Instructor of Expression and later Dean of Women Laura Kuykendall, this annual event served to celebrate “the birth of Spring.” It grew to draw in Southwestern’s largest crowd of community members and guests across Texas for the springtime spectacle. This vastly-attended event, being directed by Kuykendall and being held at the site of the Woman’s campus, ultimately meant that the women of Southwestern owned something notable and important, for both men and women alike. Thus, it caused an increase in social power for the women of the Ladies Annex. Now, this event has been lost in the Southwestern community’s collective memory altogether.
Its first year, The May Fete included an extensive program and was held during the afternoon of May 1st. The Southwestern Band and Orchestra played multiple tunes while 160 female students marched in patterned configurations, wearing intricate costumes reminiscent of springtime flowers and butterflies. After the large configurations, nine fast-paced drills occurred, each including ten to fourteen female students. Concluding the drills was a dance around the maypole (see images below).
These dances and drills included within the May Fete were reminiscent of aspects of pagan tradition, specifically due to the celebration of the natural world and Earth’s cycles coming back to Spring. Although not directly, outwardly, or intentionally a resistance of Methodism, the style and topics that are seen thematically within this event and some of Kuykendall’s other events do allude to pagan tradition and celebration. It could be argued that this performance of paganism is connected with female empowerment as an alternate/tangential theology, as it is often associated with witches and sorceresses and is one that revolves around the natural cycles of seasons. This subtle hinting of female power through campus-wide events like the May Fete makes sense, because Kuykendall was an advocate for first-wave feminism in her leadership as a Dean, too.
Following the artistic performance, the May Fete Royal Party was unveiled, with the court being selected by teachers in the School of Fine Arts. The ultimate position, the May Fete Queen, was crowned by President Bishop in the inaugural year. She was student Miss Alma Barrett, daughter of later President Barrett. Other positions included May Fete King, Marshalls, and Maid of Honor. After the Royal Party was recognized, they led the entire campus and its visitors in a procession around campus to conclude the afternoon’s event.
This procession began at the “Woman’s Campus,” or the east side of campus that today houses most first-year students. Even more, the entire May Fete program was held inside and outside of the Ladies Annex. This is notable. For Laura Kuykendall to initiate the largest community-based Southwestern event at the site of what was considered “women’s space” meant that the women of Southwestern owned something notable and important, for both men and women. It was something that represented Southwestern to the outward public. Thus, this event gave the Annex, and therefore the women, power.
Kuykendall was publicly celebrated for the success of this first annual event, with her name making multiple headlines in newspapers within the county. An article in The Megaphone from May 1915 described it as “the swellest and biggest affair that has ever taken place here.” The author gave “a thousand and one million thanks to you, Miss Kuykendall! Three cheers and fifteen more!”
Due to this first-annual success, May 1st became a school-wide holiday by 1918, and future programs were extended to feature two days of events. Included in this was a proper pageant, a ball game, and a formal banquet for the Queen. Most cherished by the community, though, was the delivery of May baskets. This involved the women of Ladies Annex and later Laura Kuykendall Hall going around the Georgetown community at 5:30 in the morning of May 1st, leaving baskets full of flowers for SU friends, professors, and staff while singing songs at their doorsteps.
Kuykendall would never pass up an opportunity to increase the pageantry and intricacy of an event. Notable years in Southwestern and world history included notable and curated May Fete themes to accompany them: 1918 featured a World War theme, 1919 featured a Victory theme, 1921 a Homecoming theme, and 1923 a Golden theme for Southwestern’s 50th Centennial Anniversary in Georgetown.
Following Kuykendall’s death, from 1936 to 1950, the celebration continued as the ‘May Day Festival” out of courtesy and tradition, but after 1950 it fell out of practice altogether. Now, this event has been lost in the Southwestern community’s collective memory altogether.
Although mostly intended for entertainment, the May Fete did mark the first major, annual, and multi-gendered event held at the site of the Women’s Campus. The May Fete still did largely reinforce normative notions of femininity through idealizations of pageantry, beauty, springtime, purity, and spectacle. But, for the time, in 1915, hosting an event that encompassed a vast population of Texans and that was directed by a powerful singular female leader (Laura Kuykendall) is very much notable. Southwestern could have chosen to hold the celebration on the western side of campus, where the upper administration worked and where male students lived. But, to have the May Fete, which was known state-wide, held at the place of womanhood ultimately displayed a transference of or increase in social power for the female students and instructors of the Ladies Annex.
