[4] At that time, there were only two other black students at Smith College — Helen Maria Chesnutt and her sister Ethel — who both graduated a year later.

[3] She earned a master's degree from Columbia University in New York City after attending summer sessions.

[6] Her dissertation, Thomas Heywood, Dramatist: A Study in Elizabethan Drama of Everyday Life, was published by Yale University Press in 1928.

[8] Throughout her academic career, Cromwell worked to advance the cause of civil rights and racial and gender equality.

[3] Upon her retirement, Cromwell began what was to be her major scholarly work, The Life of Lucretia Mott (Harvard University Press, 1958).