Lee Etta Powell, professor emerita at George Washington University, died at her home in Washington, D.C. on May 16. She was 93 years old.
Powell was one of the first African Americans to teach at a predominantly White school in Baltimore. She went on serve as principal of Taft Junior High School, in Washington, D.C.; North Bethesda Junior High School in Maryland; and Gaithersburg Senior High School, in Maryland. She later was the first African American to be an associate school superintendent in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Powell was the first woman and the first African Americans to serve as superintendent of the Cincinnati public school system, the third largest in the state of Ohio.
Powell later joined the faculty at George Washington University where she was one of only two tenured Black faculty members in the School of Education. She also served as a senior consultant with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.