Lucy Diggs Slowe Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center

By sporting a more masculine striped buttoned shirt with a short uncurled hair cut, Slowe perhaps signals some rejection of the Edwardian feminist ideals she once portrayed. In contrast to her previous portrait, she looks directly at the camera, meeting the viewer's gaze and evoking an emboldened sense of confidence and maturity in her abilities. By 1915, armed with regional acclaim for her teaching style and her master's degree from Columbia University, Slowe moved back to Washington, DC, to teach at Armstrong Manual Training High School and then lead the city's first junior high, M Street (Shaw) Junior High School.