Lucy Diggs Slowe (July 4, 1883 [3] – October 21, 1937) was an American educator and athlete, and the first Black woman to serve as Dean of Women at any American university. She was a founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first sorority founded by African-American women.

Lucy Diggs Slowe Elementary School, once located in DC, also donned her name. The school had a historic legacy, opening in 1945 to provide education for Black students in the Brookland neighborhood (DC Historic Sites).

Lucy Diggs Slowe lost both of her parents by the age of six and went to live with her Aunt Martha Price. She soon moved from Lexington, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland seeking greater life opportunity. At the age of 13, she entered the Baltimore segregated public school system.

Lucy Diggs Slowe (1885–1937) was one of the most remarkable and accomplished figures in the history of Black women’s higher education.

Lucy Diggs Slowe (1885-1937; Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1915) was a woman of many "firsts." Slowe was one of the original sixteen founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the first sorority founded by African American women.

Oct 1, 2020 · When she was 6, Lucy Diggs Slowe, wriggling and obstreperous, was sent home from school with a note: Her teacher was exasperated with her unruly behavior and her difficulties with the alphabet.

Jan 23, 2025 · 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.

Apr 18, 2022 · Returning to campus for the new school year in 1937, Howard University’s students received grim news: one of their deans, Lucy Diggs Slowe, was “reputed critically ill with pleurisy. Her condition was such on Tuesday that relatives were called to her bedside.”

Slowe became the first African American to win a major athletic title when she won the American Tennis Association championship in 1917, and she served as the first Dean of Women at Howard University (the first African American to serve in such a position at any university in the US), dedicating her career to supporting young Black women in ...

Lucy Diggs Slowe, who died in 1937, embodied the paradoxes and possibilities of feminism in an elite African American institution in the 1920s and 1930s. Sources: Anderson, Karen, "Brickbats and Roses: Lucy Diggs Slowe, 1883-1937."