Luminaries

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz

Born June 3, 1919, in Salisbury, North Carolina, Elizabeth Duncan attended Salisbury public schools and Livingstone College, receiving a bachelor's degree in English and elementary education in 1938. She went on to earn her master's degree from Atlanta University in 1941, and did further study at Columbia and Indiana Universities.

In 1968, she was elected president of the NEA, a first for Black Americans. As NEA president, she outlined a nine-point program in which she called for a unified, secure, respected, informed, and socially aware profession—a profession that ensured adequate income after retirement, protected against unjust attacks, fostered teacher-leaders, and was undivided by artificial differences.

During the Nixon years, she served as director of the Woman's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, the first Black woman to do so, and was the highest ranking Black woman in that administration. Koontz was a champion of the rights of minority women, and fought for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. The recipient of many awards, citations, honors, and honorary degrees, she retired in 1982.

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