Lucy Diggs Slowe was a trailblazer as an academic and athlete. In 1922,

Lucy Diggs Slowe was a trailblazer as an academic and athlete. In 1922,

Lucy Diggs Slowe was a trailblazer as an academic and athlete. In 1922, she was the first African American woman to serve as permanent Dean of Women and Professor of English at Howard University. Slowe established a separate women’s campus and three new dormitories to address women’s academic, physical, professional, and social development on the Howard campus.

In 1917, however, Slowe became the first African American to win a national title in any sport. She won her first women’s title at the American Tennis Association’s (ATA) tournament in Baltimore, Maryland. She would later win a total of 17 tennis cup championships. In 2011, Slowe was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame.

Lucy Diggs Slowe was born on July 4, 1883, in Berryville, Clarke County, Virginia, the youngest of seven children to Henry Slowe, a hotel operator, and Fannie Potter Slowe. Sadly, a year later, in 1884, Slowe’s father died, and five years later, when she was six years old, her mother died. Slowe was adopted and raised by her paternal aunt, Martha Slowe Price, who moved Lucy and her sister, Charlotte, from Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland. Slowe later graduated as a Salutatorian from the Baltimore Colored High School in 1904.

In the fall of 1904, Slowe received a scholarship to attend Howard University. In 1908, while at Howard, Slowe was one of nine founding members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-letter sorority for college-educated African American women. Later that year she graduated from Howard University as class valedictorian. After graduation, she held her first teaching appointment at Douglass High School in Baltimore, Maryland.