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Born October 19, 1936, in Jacksonville, FL
Johnnetta Cole was the first Black woman president of Spelman College, a prestigious historically Black college for women that dates to 1881. She holds advanced degrees in anthropology from Northwestern University. Cole directed the Black studies program at Washington State University, helped establish the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and directed the Latin American and Caribbean studies program at Hunter College. From 2009 to 2017, she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.