Five years ago, Nia-Sarai Perry wasn’t sure her mother, a breast cancer survivor, would live to see her graduate college. This Sunday, Perry will cross the stage at Spelman College with six other women, all sharing the same title: valedictorian.
The group — Aiyana Ringo, Alyssa Richardson, Cori’Anna White, Sophia Davis, Mariama Diallo, and Alexis Sims, along with Perry — have broken the school’s record for the most valedictorians in a single graduating class, the historically Black college said. They’ve become known as the Spelman Seven, though the name only came together a few weeks ago.
“It’s an emotional time,” Perry told reporters. “I love the fact that I don’t have to do this alone. I hate doing things alone. So of course, I’m not valedictorian alone.”
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The bond behind the braids and the tissues
When one of them starts to cry, the others move in close. They shed tears of their own. Someone reaches for a tissue from a purse. The synchrony isn’t rehearsed — they haven’t had much time to practice the public part of being co-valedictorians. But their sisterhood, they say, has roots that go back years.
Sophia Davis entered Spelman with a goal of becoming the best, even if she didn’t quite know what that meant. Aiyana Ringo wanted to maximize her full-ride scholarship. Alexis Sims wrote “4.0 GPA” on a color-coded Excel spreadsheet next to a checkbox on a wish list. She said she didn’t want to put that pressure on herself, knowing one exam could jeopardize everything.
Over four years, Davis said she came to define “the best” differently: knowing when to pour into the people who had poured into her. “It is all of the people that have poured into us,” Davis said. “This is all of the forces, all of the love, all of the companionship that has gotten us to this moment.” When the seven walk across the stage Sunday, she said, they’ll stand for hundreds — their mothers, fathers, siblings and ancestors.
Sims and Perry sometimes “hold court,” sharing troubles in a parking lot or the school cafeteria. One night at the end of Perry’s junior year, she told Sims about an A minus that would break her 4.0 record. “I was just done,” Perry said. “Just get me across the stage.” Sims reminded her how hard she’d worked and urged her to retake the class where she’d earned a 93. That move decided Perry’s valedictorian status.
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From a Brooklyn bus to a Spelman stage
Davis and Diallo met a decade ago, riding the bus together in Brooklyn. They were two of the only Black girls at an academically rigorous middle school. This week, Davis said they traced how challenging it had been to be “young people that didn’t quite always fit into these environments that we were growing up in.” When asked if she was surprised to see Diallo become valedictorian beside her, Davis laughed — and the Spelman Seven all laughed together.
“I was not surprised,” Davis said. “This was a long time coming.”
Unbeknownst to each other at the time, Diallo said White once unknowingly cheered her on through a creative rut. That night, Diallo went home and cried about how White gave her the energy she needed. This week, the valedictorians showered each other with flowers and praise. White described their collective success as a celebration of Black excellence, especially now when Black women face so much plight. “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” she said.
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The seven have individual plans: Davis is pursuing research in music, art and the environment. Sims, who finally checked that Excel box, aspires to be a lawyer. Richardson wants to become a doctor. White will start law school this fall. “I can’t wait until we’re future lawyers, future executives, future musicians, future directors, future doctors,” White said, “in which we’re able to call each other, go to each other’s weddings, each other’s baby showers, because this is a lifelong commitment.”
Record applications and a growing HBCU spotlight
The competitiveness that produced seven valedictorians didn’t arise from nowhere. Chelsea Holley, Spelman’s director of admissions, said the number of applicants to the all-women’s college shot up in recent years, dropping the acceptance rate from 50% to 28%. “Some of the top HBCUs around the country are really seeing increased applications, increased visibility,” Holley said. She noted that former Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to attend Howard University also helped raise interest in historically Black colleges and universities.
Richardson said the sisterhood she found within the Spelman Seven was exactly what she wanted when she applied to Spelman. “What I experienced was not a one-off, that Spelman can repeat this over and over and over again, that we can continue to be this machine that pushes out changemakers in the world,” Richardson said. She had a message for future students: “Break our record. I want more and more and more.”
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