The Path to Professor
Crosby’s correspondence reveals some steps — and strategy — along the way.
Though in later years she denied ever having experienced discrimination because of her gender, Elizabeth Crosby was clearly aware of the uniqueness of her situation and seems to have been fearful that, after her mentor G. Carl Huber’s death in 1934, she might be seen as a liability to the University. Over the next three years, she resigned from the Medical School at least five times.
A close reading of Crosby’s correspondence with Dean Albert C. Furstenberg and others throughout this time suggests at least a subtle awareness that her humble and deferent demeanor — coupled with well-timed offers from other institutions — could work in her favor.
In a letter to Dr. Furstenberg on February 21, 1935, Crosby wrote:
“It would seem that a woman in my position, as a second ranking member of the Anatomy Department might, under normal circumstances, prove as a source of embarrassment to you as Dean and to the executive faculty of the Medical School. This has been apparent to me since Dr. Huber’s death. ... I am herewith placing my resignation at the disposal of yourself and the Medical Faculty, if you wish to accept it.”
The dean convinced her to stay but the reality behind the letter is that Crosby was being courted by Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. On May 15, 1935, she wrote to Furstenberg again:
“They offered me a position as professor of Anatomy and Director of the Department with full authority to completely reorganize the department and choose my staff, choice as to the subjects which I personally shall teach, half time for research and money to carry on both the teaching and research side. The salary is $5000 for nine months.”
This was far more than she had ever earned at Michigan. Crosby closes by suggesting that she will be resigning in a few days and wiring her acceptance to Philadelphia. Then, in a somewhat un-Crosby-like zinger, she adds that she has also just refused an offer to head a research institute abroad.
What happened next became a story that Crosby related many times through the years. After working through an entire weekend in her lab, she wrote up her letter of acceptance to Women’s, put it in an envelope, and stamped it. She was walking across campus to mail it when she ran into a colleague. They exchanged pleasantries, then Crosby showed him the envelope and proudly told him, “I’m going to take it!” Panicked, the man begged her to wait one more day to mail it. She agreed. A storm of letters and calls followed and, again, Crosby stayed — but things were not settled for long.
In February of 1936, embryologist Bradley Patten was named head of the Department of Anatomy. Though Patten seems to have been determined to improve salaries and conditions for his faculty, Crosby privately didn’t think much of him. In March, she wrote asking, with utter politeness, “that my salary shall not be affected by such changes.”
In a letter and a subsequent meeting, Patten diplomatically told her that he was responsible for “establishing a more equitable salary scale for our staff than that which now exists” and that her refusal of a raise put him in “a difficult position” that could potentially embarrass him. Crosby backed down and accepted a raise.
Patten promptly wrote to Furstenberg, “That, I think, clears the atmosphere and makes the present more than ever the appropriate time for recognition of Dr. Crosby’s outstanding scholarly attainments and long, unselfish service to the University.”
Soon after, she was Professor Crosby — the first woman to hold that title in the Medical School — with a salary of $4,000 per year. One might think that would be the end of it. Crosby had reached a level in academia that few women at that time thought attainable. She was passionate about her work. She had good friends among her colleagues, including Tryphena Humphrey (M.D. 1931, Ph.D. 1936), an anatomy instructor and former Huber/Crosby graduate student with whom Crosby had become close; in 1937, the two were sharing an apartment on Elizabeth Street. But, in fact, there was more turmoil to come.
On October 15, 1937, Crosby tendered to Patten yet another formal resignation. The same day, Patten fired off to Furstenberg:
“I do not yet know what is behind Dr. Crosby’s sudden letter of resignation. She is very sensitive and I have probably inadvertently ‘stuck my foot in it’ somehow... It may be because I told Dr. Crosby that Dr. Humphrey had no future here, although our discussion of the matter was perfectly pleasant... If you can find out any way in which I may have offended her, I will do all I can to put it right. We don’t want to lose her.”
Furstenberg again averted her flight but a year later, Crosby announced that she was taking a position organizing the first courses in histology and neuroanatomy at Marischal College, in the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. A handwritten note to Patten reveals a clue to the reasons behind Crosby’s many resignations in the years following Huber’s death:
“This is a perfectly respectable offer from Aberdeen and if you urge me to stay again I shall no longer feel that you are keeping me because you don’t know what else to do. I doubt if anyone knows how much this has worried me.”
In another letter, she writes, referring to Michigan’s fervent desire to keep her, “It settles, as nothing else could have done, my feeling that I was being kept on at Michigan ‘for long and faithful service.’ ... I would rather wash dishes for a living.”
After much negotiation, Crosby agreed to go for a year and then reevaluate. Humphrey accompanied her and other graduate students and colleagues came to visit her in an ancient, chilly, stone house in Aberdeen. As World War II began to pose significant dangers, Patten and others sent her urgent wires to return to the States, but Crosby stayed in Aberdeen, feverishly preparing histology slides until the last minute, returning to Michigan in 1940 and maintaining her association with the Medical School well beyond her “retirement” in 1958.