[8] She graduated from high school in Gary, Indiana,[5] and at the age of 16 attended Oberlin College,[9] where she received a bachelor of arts degree in 1928.

[14] Some of her other pupils at Howard included actresses Roxie Roker and Zaida Coles, stage director and playwright Shauneille Perry, and actor Graham Brown.

The Howard University Players, who were active during the 1920s, toured Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany in 1949 as ambassadors of goodwill for the United States Department of State—the first college theater group to do so.

[5] The Howard Players produced Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck with an almost entirely Black cast, as well as Dorothy and DuBose Heyward's Mamba's Daughters.

"[9] In May 1969, Cooke Reid coordinated a meeting at Haverford College along with psychologist Kenneth Clark of fourteen prominent African American intellectuals to advocate for racial integration.

[15] These participants, including author Ralph Ellison, United States circuit judge William H. Hastie, economist Phyllis Ann Wallace, and US secretary of housing and urban development Robert C. Weaver, were known as the Haverford Group.