First Women Enroll at Virginia Military Institute (VMI)
Following a Supreme Court decision declaring VMI’s all-male policy an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause, on June 26, 1996, VMI on this day admitted its first 30 women.
The first women graduated from VMI on May 19, 2001.
See also the the first women admitted to West Point Military Academy on July 7, 1976, and the admission of the first women to Annapolis Naval Academy on July 6, 1976.
Read about women at VMI: Philippa Strum, Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights (2002)
Learn more: Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel Greenlee, A Few Good Women: America’s Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010)
Watch the VMI women’s rugby team in 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ej00me6VU
Visit the U.S. Army Women’s Museum: http://www.awm.lee.army.mil/