Lucy Diggs Slowe

Lucy Diggs Slowe was born in Berryville, Virginia, on the fourth of July 1885, the youngest of Henry and Fannie Porter Slowe's seven children. By the time she was about six years old, both of her parents had died. She and her sister were taken in by a paternal aunt, Martha Price, who raised her in Lexington, Virginia. When Lucy was thirteen, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she entered the segregated public schools and graduated near the top of her class in 1904.

Winning a scholarship, she entered Howard University, becoming the first graduate of her Baltimore school to do so. At Howard she was among the nine founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority in 1908 — the first Greek-letter sorority established by African American women — helping draft its constitution and serving as its first president. She graduated as class valedictorian that same year and later earned a master's degree from Columbia University.

Slowe built a distinguished career in education, teaching in the schools of the District of Columbia and in 1919 becoming principal of the city's first Black junior high school. In 1917 she also claimed a national tennis singles title in the American Tennis Association's first tournament, becoming the first African American woman to win a major national sports championship. In 1922 she was named the first Dean of Women at Howard University — the first Black woman to hold such a post at any American university — a role she filled for fifteen years.

As dean she championed the dignity and full education of college women, securing a women's campus at Howard and founding the National Association of College Women. She shaped a generation of Black women scholars and leaders until her death on October 21, 1937. May her name endure as a builder of doors through which countless others have since walked.