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Euphemia Lofton Haynes

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September 11, 1890 - July 25, 1980

Martha Euphemia Lofton was born in Washington, D.C. in 1890, the first child and only daughter of Dr. Willian Lofton and Mrs. Lavinia Day Lofton. After graduating from Washington D.C. Miner Normal School with distinction, she went on to earn an undergraduate mathematics major (and psychology minor) from Smith College in 1914. In 1917 she married Harold Appo Haynes.

Haynes pursued graduate studies in mathematics and education at the University of Chicago, earning a masters degree in education in 1930. She continued her graduate work in mathematics at the Catholic University of America where in 1943 she became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. Her dissertation on "The Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences" was written under the supervision of Professor Aubrey Landrey.

Euphemia Haynes devoted her life to education in the Washington, D.C. area for forty-seven years, including teaching mathematics at Armstrong High School and Dunbar High School. She became a professor of mathematics at Miner Teachers College in 1930 where she established the mathematics department and served as chair of the Division of Mathematics and Business Education (in 1955 Minor Teachers College and Wilson Teachers College united to form the District of Columbia Teachers College.) From July 1966 to July 1967, Haynes served as the first woman to chair the District of Columbia School Board. She played a central role in the integration of the DC public schools. Upon her death, she left $700,000 to the Catholic University of America which was used to establish the Euphemia Lofton Haynes Chair in the Department of Education and to support a student loan fund in the School of Education.

In addition to her academic work, Euphemia Haynes also served as president of the Catholic Interracial Council of the District of Columbia and president of the Washington Archdiocesan Council on Catholic Women.

Dr. Euphemia Lofton Haynes, 90, a former D.C. board of education president and member and a Washington educator for nearly 50 years, died Thursday at the Washington Hospital Center. She had been hospitalized since suffering a stroke July 25.

Dr. Haynes served as school board president from July 1966 to July 1967. A fourth-generation Washingtonian, she was a product of the same school system that she later headed.

She served as a member of the old nine-member school board, then appointed by judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for seven years before becoming its president.

During that time she was an active and outspoken critic of the school system's de facto structure of segregation and its "track system," which placed students in academic or vocational programs depending on ability.

The track system, which had structured the city's schools for a number of years and which was said to discriminate against black and poor students, was abolished along with de facto segregation by Judge J. Skelly Wright in June 1967, when Mrs. Haynes was board president.

Mrs. Haynes had favored black civil rights leader Julius W. Hobson's suit, charging the school system with racial and economic discrimination, which led to Judge Wright's decision.

She also was school board president when the machinery for an election to establish collective bargaining rights for public school teachers was set up in March 1967. She left the board in 1968 when the city's first elected school board took office.

Mrs. Haynes graduated from Smith College in 1914. She earned a master's degree in education from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in mathematics from Catholic University.

She taught mathematics in Washington high schools and, in 1930, established a mathematics department at old Miners Teachers College here. She was professor and chairman of the department when she retired in 1959.

After retiring, Mrs. Haynes became active in Catholic organizations. She was president of the Washington Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women from 1964 to 1966. She also served on the board of Catholic Charities and as member of the D.C. branch of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

In 1959, she received the Papal medal, "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifex" for her service to the church and her community.

Her husband, Dr. Harold A. Haynes, a former deputy superintendent of the city's public schools, died two years ago. Mrs. Haynes leaves no immediate survivors."