Johnnetta ColeBorn 19 Oct 1936.Anthropologist and educator who was the first African-American woman president of Spelman College, in Atlanta, the oldest, private, liberal arts college for black women in the U.S. (1988). While president of Spelman, she taught one course per term in addition to her other academic responsibilities. Her interest in anthropology was sparked in part because it was new and unfamiliar, and a most unusual professional aspiration for an African-American woman during the 1950s. In 1960-62, she worked together with her new husband in Liberia, where they worked together on research for their respective dissertations. He conducted economic surveys and she engaged in fieldwork in the villages and towns of that West African nation. |
