Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Ph.D.

Virginia Walcott Beauchamp was an educator, author, journalist, and community activist. She made significant contributions to the status of women and women's literature and history.

Beauchamp was born on June 28, 1920, in Sparta, Michigan, near Grand Rapids, to Fred G. and Edith C. Walcott. She graduated in 1942 with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Ann Arbor in Michigan. In 1955, she earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago. In between earning her degrees, Beauchamp served in the Red Cross following World War II in the Pacific. From 1963 to 1965, Beauchamp and her family lived in Lagos, Nigeria, where she helped found the American International School of Lagos in 1964, serving on their first school board. It was one of her proudest achievements.

Beauchamp founded the Women's Studies Program at the University of Maryland and served as its first director. She taught at the university from 1965 until her retirement in 1990. She developed new courses and guided students in studying the lives and writings of women.

Beauchamp found that because some kinds of writings were considered improper for women, they wrote in genres such as letters, diaries, and family histories. She wrote extensively and worked as an editor on several books. In 1987, she published A Private War: Letters and Diaries of Madge Preston, 1862-1867.

Beauchamp was a pioneer in community efforts to improve the status of women. In 1976, she was a founding member of the Women's Action Coalition of Prince George's County, a network of diverse women's groups. She served as a member of the Prince George's County Commission for Women from 1990-1993. Beauchamp coordinated lectures showcasing women scholars for the College Park Branch of the American Association of University Women. She received a Governor's Citation for her contributions to achieving sex equity in Maryland educational institutions during the first decade of Title IX.

Beauchamp served as a reporter, editor, editorial writer, and member of the Board of Directors for the Greenbelt News Review for several decades.

In 1991, Beauchamp was inducted into the Prince George's County Women's Hall of Fame and was selected for their Women of Achievement volume the following year. She was also named in the Women of Achievement in Maryland History, published in 2002. In that same year, she was chosen as the Greenbelt, Maryland, Outstanding Citizen. In 2015, the University of Maryland and the American Association of University Women held a special program in her honor, “A Celebration of Equity for Women, Virginia Walcott Beauchamp in her 95th year.”

She married George Beauchamp, Jr., a fellow graduate student from the University of Chicago. They had three children together: Edith, George and John. She died at age 99 from cardiovascular disease on February 10, 2019, at a hospice center in Harwood, Maryland.

Virginia Beauchamp was a pioneer, risk taker, and intellectual with a vision and has given women the power to believe they have a history to be proud of and a future to believe in.