During the almost five years that I have been leading SisterMentors I have come to realize that very few women of color doctoral candidates are aware of the first black women in America who received their doctorates. Our challenges today as women of color doctoral candidates pale in comparison to the challenges these women faced as they pursued their doctorates. We can barely imagine their everyday lives as they researched and wrote their dissertations while living under segregation, intense racism, and normalized sexism. In spite of their race, gender, class and age, these black women must have drawn on something deep inside themselves to stay motivated and committed to getting their doctorates.

Eva Beatrice Dykes, Ph.D. received her doctorate in English Philology in 1921 and became one of the first three black women to receive a doctorate in America. Born in Washington, D.C., she taught at the M Street High School (later known as the Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School) for eight years before becoming an associate professor of English at Howard University. She then moved to Alabama to chair the English department at Oakwood College.

Georgiana Simpson, Ph.D. also received her doctorate in 1921 at the age of fifty-five. Simpson's doctorate was in German from the University of Chicago. Simpson studied German language and literature in Germany and did postdoctoral work in French language and literature. Like Dykes, Simpson was born in Washington, D.C., taught at Paul Dunbar High School and later at Howard University.

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, Ph.D., J.D., like Dykes and Simpson, received her doctorate in 1921. Born to a prominent family in Philadelphia, Mossell Alexander was the first black woman to receive her doctorate in Economics. Several years later, she entered law school at the University of Pennsylvania and became the first black woman to be admitted to the bar and practice law in the State of Pennsylvania.

Anna Julia Cooper, Ph.D., was the fourth black woman to receive a doctorate in 1925. Like Georgiana Simpson, Cooper was not young when she received her doctorate but was sixty-six years old. Cooper transferred credits from Columbia University to the Sorbonne in Paris, France where she defended her dissertation entitled, "The Attitude of France toward Slavery during the Revolution." The daughter of a slave, Cooper was a feminist, distinguished scholar, educator, human rights advocate, writer, lecturer and a major player in the nineteenth-century black women's club movement. She was outspoken and passionate. Cooper spent quite a few years in Washington, D.C. where she taught and later became principal at the Paul Dunbar High School.

Gloria Conyers Hewitt, Ph.D., was one of the first black women to receive a doctorate in Mathematics in 1962. Born in South Carolina, Hewitt received her doctorate from the University of Washington, Seattle. She then taught at the University of Montana, was a visiting lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America and chair of the Educational Testing Service's Graduate Record Examination Committee.

Let's celebrate these black women doctorates and let all women of color pursuing their doctorates be inspired by their self-discipline, perseverance and courage.