She received her bachelor's degree in from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, in 1941 and transferred to teach in her native Beaumont in 1942.
[3] In the summer of 1947, she was attending graduate school at the University of Washington and writing a mathematics book for children.
The Seattle Urban League, NAACP, the Civic Unity Committee, and Christian Friends for Racial Equality all encouraged the school system to break the color barrier by hiring her.
Nonetheless, some of Seattle's long-established African American families were unhappy to see this groundbreaking role go to an outsider.
During World War II, the Seattle School Board had relaxed a prior rule against married women teachers.