Louise Stokes Hunter

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Louise Stokes Hunter
A young Black woman wearing a sailor-style middy blouse, in an oval frame
Louise Stokes (later Hunter), from the 1920 yearbook of Howard University
Born
Ella Louise Stokes

Petersburg, Virginia
Died1988
OccupationMathematics educator
SpouseJohn McNeile Hunter

Ella Louise Stokes Hunter (died 1988) was an American mathematics educator who became the first African-American woman to earn a degree at the University of Virginia. She taught for many years at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute and Virginia State College, two names for what is now Virginia State University.

Early life and education[edit]

Hunter was originally from Petersburg, Virginia. After studying at Peabody High School in Petersburg and the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, the predecessor institution to Virginia State,[1] she went to Howard University, joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority,[2] and graduated in 1920.[1][3] She earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University in 1925.[2][3] Although African American women such as Alberta Virginia Scott had previously graduated from Radcliffe College, she may have been the first to earn a degree from Harvard proper.[2]

Later in life, while working as a faculty member at Virginia State, Hunter became a doctoral student at the University of Virginia, studying mathematics education and doing her doctoral dissertation research on the transition from high school to college mathematics. She completed her Ph.D. in 1953, becoming the first African-American woman to earn a degree at the university,[2][4] two months after another doctoral student in education, Walter N. Ridley, became the first African-American with a degree from the University of Virginia.[5]

Career and later life[edit]

After graduating from Howard University, Hunter became an instructor at the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, where she taught for many years.[2] In 1921, she was one of six instructors there who banded together to found the Delta Omega graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha (originally called the Nu chapter),[6] and later she became its first historian and eighth president.[2][7] On the faculty at the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, she met John McNeile Hunter,[2] who began teaching electrical engineering there in 1925 and later became the third African American to earn a doctorate in physics.[8] They married in 1929,[9] and their daughter Jean, later a research psychologist, was born in 1938.[10] Hunter became "known for her mentorship of Black students, particularly Black women studying math".[2] Mathematician Linda B. Hayden recalls her as one of the faculty mentors who encouraged her to go on to graduate study.[11] Mathematician Gladys West saw Hunter and her husband as "the first model of a power couple", and Hunter as a mentor who "still had something to prove, and maybe she felt like she was carrying the weight of other women on her shoulders".[12] By 1948 she had been promoted to associate professor.[13]

After retiring from Virginia State University, Hunter continued to teach at Saint Paul's College (Virginia). She died in Petersburg in 1988.[14]

Recognition[edit]

The annual student research conference at the University of Virginia was renamed as the Hunter Research Conference in 2020, in Hunter's honor. The conference had previously been named for Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, but his name was removed over his historical advocacy of slavery, opposition to school integration, and service as a confederate officer in the American Civil War.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b The Echo: 1920, Howard University Yearbooks, vol. 101, Howard University, 1920
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Hoxworth, Laura (May 11, 2021), "Uncovering the Legacy of UVA's First Black Woman Graduate", UVAToday, retrieved 2021-10-02
  3. ^ a b The Harvard University Catalogue, 1925, p. 449
  4. ^ "U. of Va. graduates first negro woman Ph.D.", Jet, vol. 4, no. 17, p. 26, September 3, 1953
  5. ^ Gates, Ernie, "Serpentine Timeline: Some of the twists and turns of UVA history", UVa Magazine, University of Virginia, retrieved 2021-10-02
  6. ^ Jones, Sean (December 18, 2020), "VDHR awards local marker for one of the nation's oldest African American sororities", The Progress-Index
  7. ^ Delta Omega Chapter History and Notable Delta Omega Women, Delta Omega Chapter, Alpha Kappa Alpha, retrieved 2021-10-02
  8. ^ Williams, Scott, "John McNeile Hunter", Physicists of the African Diaspora, University at Buffalo, retrieved 2021-10-02
  9. ^ Marriage date from the author biography section of John M. Hunter's doctoral dissertation, The Anomalous Schottky Effect for Oxygenated Tungsten, Cornell University, 1937, Bibcode:1937PhDT.........6H, retrieved from Google Books 2021-10-02
  10. ^ Jean E. Hunter White, June 15, 1938 - March 21, 2011, J. M. Wilkerson Funeral Establishment, retrieved 2021-10-02
  11. ^ "Linda Hayden", Black History Month 2017 Honoree, Mathematically Gifted & Black, retrieved 2021-10-02
  12. ^ Khadjavi, Lily; Malek-Madani, Reza; Moore, Tanya (2021), "Navigating an uncharted path: the life and legacy of Dr. Gladys B. West", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 68 (3): 357–364, doi:10.1090/noti2243, MR 4218169, S2CID 233773428
  13. ^ "Notes", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 54 (1): 1096–1103, 1948, doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1948-09112-1, MR 1565030
  14. ^ "The Life of Louise Stokes Hunter", Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Virginia, retrieved 2021-10-02
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