District Administration – Jessie Woolley-Wilson
“1925 was an important year—not just for the United States, but for our nation’s education system. It was the height of the Jazz Age. F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, and the first issue of The New Yorker was released. Frank Neuhauser won the first national spelling bee with the word “gladiolus,” and the nation was rocked by the Scopes trial and debates over teaching evolution in public schools. In the midst of all this, Elbert Cox, an African American educator and World War I veteran, quietly made history by becoming the first African American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Eighteen years after Cox earned his degree from Cornell University in New York, Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes became the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics. She was a lifelong educator and taught for 40 years in the Washington, D.C., public school system.” (more)