[2][3] After graduating from San Bernardino High School in 1922,[4][5] she graduated in 1927 from the University of Southern California,[6][7] with further voice, piano, and organ studies in Chicago and Columbus, with Richard Hageman, Moissaye Boguslawski, Marcella Craft, and other musicians.

[8][10] In Missouri, she was a soloist with the People's Symphony Orchestra in St. Louis, and she was director of music at Lincoln University,[11] where her husband was a professor of history.

[6][12] In 1939, she directed a "Yuletide pageant" of forty performers in San Bernardino, using traditional black spirituals.

[17] Later in life, she was associate professor of voice and chair of the humanities department at Jarvis Christian College in Texas,[18] and wrote a musical pageant, Hearthstones.

[9] She was active in the Missouri State and Jefferson City branches of the NAACP,[19] and a charter member the Los Angeles alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta.