Lucy Diggs Slowe Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
In 1926, Dr. Mordecai W. Johnson became the first Black president of Howard University. Notably, the renowned Baptist preacher's hiring symbolized a new era for "The Capstone of Negro Education." However, for Dean Slowe, Dr. Johnson's presidency ushered in almost ceaseless degrading tension between the two. Within a two year span, Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe unsuccessfully fought to oust a male professor, Clarence Mills, accused of unapologetically using profane language in his classroom of men and women, ceased receiving invitations to weekly administrative meetings that seemingly all other deans and high-ranking university officials regularly attended, and was denied adequate pay increases despite having now earned her PhD from Columbia. In a memorandum following the Mills incident, Dean Slowe writes in justifiable bitterness, "when the time came to raise salaries, he raised mine $200 and raised other Deans with qualifications no better than mine in amounts ranging from $850 to $1150."