TAKING HOME EC GLOBAL
Oct 19, 2021
4 minutes
BY SARAH RICHARDSON
s Flemmie Pansy Kittrell was departing on a U.S. government-sponsored visit in 1967, one of her Afrikaner escorts asked how she had enjoyed her stay in the apartheid state. “I have never been so unhappy as I am now, to think that you think I enjoyed my stay, but I thank you for your courtesy,” Kittrell diplomatically replied. A Black American professor of home economics serving informally as a goodwill ambassador, Kittrell had spent her life straddling uncomfortable barriers. Against the historic grain, she established an influential career in the emerging field of home economics and in 1936 became the first Black woman in the United States to earn a PhD in nutrition.
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