Background
Cole is the grand daughter of Florida's first black millionaire Abraham Lincoln Lewis and Mary Kingsley Sammis, the great granddaughter of Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and slave owner, and his wife and former slave Anna Madgigine Jai, originally from current Senegal, whose Fort George Island home is protected as Kingsley Plantation. Cole enrolled in Fisk University at age 15, but transferred to Oberlin College, where she completed a B.A. in anthropology in 1957. She attended graduate school at Northwestern University, earning her masters (1959) and Ph.D. (1967) in anthropology. Cole received honorary degrees from Williams College and Bates College in 1989, Mount Holyoke College in 1998, Mills College in 1999, Howard University and North Carolina A&T State University in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Johnnetta B. Cole
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