[3] She was preceded by Sarah J. Garnet, who became the first African-American woman principal in Brooklyn, New York while it was still considered a separate city.

McDougald was born in Manhattan, where her father, Dr. Peter Augustus Johnson, was one of the first African-American doctors and a founder of the National Urban League.

[7] Her mother was Mary Elizabeth Whittle, an English woman from the Isle of Wight, and her older brother, Travis James Johnson, was the first African-American graduate of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1908.

Along with Rose Schneiderman, McDougald also helped organize laundry workers with the Women's Trade Union League.

[9] Her New Day for the Colored Woman in Industry in NY City, co-authored with Jessie Clark, was published in 1919.

[14][16] In March 1925, her essay "The Double Task: The Struggle for Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation" was published in the edition of Survey Graphic magazine entitled Harlem: The Mecca of the New Negro[5] (and was reprinted in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby).

After the Harlem Riots of 1935, McDougald was a part of a community forum of interracial prominent New Yorkers who evaluated the conditions of its city and changes that needed to be made.

She testified in the hearings and discussed how she wanted to work to gain the trust of parents, enforce a more relaxed atmosphere, and help provide relief for families struggling.

This program implemented child-centered progressive education in New York City's public elementary schools.

[10] Some changes to the schools included experiential learning, self-directed projects, interdisciplinary curriculum, and turn classroom experiments into "democratic living", and field trips to cultural institutions such as the Schomburg Center.