[2] Ford graduated from Wadleigh High School for Girls in 1936, and won a Rachel Herstein Scholarship from the NAACP to attend Hunter College.

During and after college, Ford and her older sister Enid played piano for children's shows called Ella Gordon's "Peter Pan Kiddies".

[6][7][8] She taught music at schools in Queens,[9] and chaired Negro History and Brotherhood Week observances for the Jamaica branch of the NAACP.

[11] She contributed music to a 1958 event organized by composer Margaret Bonds, in tribute to poet Langston Hughes.

[14] Straw composed several works, including "Sudan" (1951),[9] "Lullaby Little One" (1953), with Rena Greenlee Govern,[15] "Crucifixion" (1957) for three female voices,[16] "Two Songs of Freedom" (1967), with lyrics by her NAACP colleague Florence V. Lucas,[17][18] and Bent Twig (1998), a "folk opera" with lyrics by her neighbor, social work professor Helen Roberts Williams.