Rosa Slade Gragg

She founded the first black vocational school in Detroit, Michigan; and was the advisor to three United States presidents.

[2] Around this time, Gragg became head of the English department at Central Park College in Savannah, Georgia.

[5][3] Gragg was good friends with Mary McLeod Bethune, who was the founder of the National Council of Negro Women.

The school offered classes in trades, including tailoring, dress-making, and food production and service.

[4] During World War II, Gragg served as president of the Detroit Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

In 1960, she commissioned historian Charles H. Wesley to write the history of the National Association of Colored Women.

The book was published in 1984, and entitled The History of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs: A Legacy of Service.

[3] In 1960, Gragg was selected to be on the National Women's Advisory Committee of the Treasury Department by President John F. Kennedy.

[3] Kennedy also appointed her to the National Women's Committee on Civil Rights and the Commission on Employment of the Handicapped.

[3] The club was successful in their pursuit, and in 1962 Senate Bill 2399 was passed in United States Congress.

[3] Later that year, Gragg gave as a gift a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that had been in Frederick Douglass's library to the White House.

This was the first time in United States history that a black organization gave a gift to the White House.

[5][3][1] Over her career, Gragg served on or was affiliated with many other positions, including: the Advisory Council of the International Movement of the Atlantic Union, the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, and as the secretary on the National Women's Committee on Civil Rights.