Alpha Kappa Alpha, with a side of tennis

Today's subject is a woman who was a trailblazer in many fields, most notably in terms of education and sororities, but in addition to the other groundbreaking work she did elsewhere, she was also a champion tennis player, as well. Since she is the oldest player I've profiled so far, there aren't any pictures of her in action readily available, sadly, but no matter - she is WELL worth getting to know, if you weren't already familiar with her via her other pursuits.

Lucy Diggs Slowe was born on July 4th, 1885 in Berryville, VA. She lost both of her parents at an early age, and moved to Lexington, VA, to live with an aunt. When she was 13 years old, she and her aunt moved to Baltimore, where she enrolled as a student in the Baltimore Colored School (this of course still being deep in the segregation era). She was the first student from her school, and first woman, to attend the legendary HBCU Howard University. At Howard, she was an incredibly active student in many diverse interests, singing in the university's choir and, in what she may be best remembered for these days, being one of the founding members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first Greek-lettered sorority founded by black women in America; she was one of the people who helped to draft the group's constitution. Lucy graduated as the valedictorian of her class in 1908 and immediately started teaching at a high school in Baltimore; starting in 1911 during her summer breaks, she continued to further her own education. earning a Masters of Arts degree from New York's Columbia University in 1915.

Lucy continued teaching after getting her masters; she remained in Baltimore for several more years, then moved to Washington, D.C. in 1918. She started off as a teacher at Armstrong Manual Training School, one of three black high schools that existed in D.C. at the time, and eventually was tasked by the city's Board of Education to put together the first black junior high school in the area, which became Shaw Junior High; Lucy served as the school's first principal. In 1922, she returned to Howard University, serving as the Dean of Women, a first in the school's history. She used this time to establish better settings for the women on campus; she stressed the need for women to have their own separate learning and living spaces, and under her leadership, the first women's dormitories were built on Howard's campus. She was one of the founding members and first president of the National Association for College Women, a group that was founded to raise the standards for black women in colleges across America, and in 1931, she was the first black woman invited to speak at the National Association of Women's Deans.

So far, everything I've mentioned is remarkable in and of itself, and would be worth celebrating on its own. But the primary reason we are here is the tennis, yes? On top of everything else I've mentioned so far, Lucy was a champion tennis player, as well! According to a book written about her life, Faithful to the Task at Hand, it isn't really known exactly how she picked up the sport of tennis, other than the fact that she showed interest in sports, tennis included, at an early age in her life, which happened to coincide with the beginnings of the introduction of the sport of tennis in the United States. What we DO know is that she was already incredibly skilled at tennis by the time she entered Howard University, to the point that she was elected the president of the women's tennis club on campus. She was so good, in fact, that by the time she got her masters and had firmly settled into her teaching career, she found time to play in the American Tennis Association's first ever championship tournament, held in Baltimore in 1917 -- and won the whole damn thing! I've seen references online to Lucy having won 17 titles over the course of her playing career; the exact details of what she won and when she won it are not noted, and it couldn't have been the ATA's main championship consecutively, as this would have cut into Ora Washington's reign. Regardless of the exact breakdown of what she won, though, she clearly was just as skilled on the tennis court as she was in the other areas of her life - no mean feat.

Lucy died in October of 1937 of kidney failure, at age 52; in her incredibly accomplished life, she was able to further the advancement of women and minority students all across the country, worked tirelessly as an educator of the young, and still found the time to become an early tennis champion, well worth celebrating here for Black Tennis Month. What a remarkable woman.