Mary Stokes, 1925 and Ada B. Harris, 1926
Mary Stokes, 1925
Mary Stokes graduated Magna Cum Laude in Mathematics from Butler University in 1925. She was a member of the Mathematics Club, and is one of the charter members of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Chapter at Butler. Delta Sigma Theta was originally founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1913 and is historically a Black sorority. Mary would go on to be president of the sorority’s Chi Chapter in 1929.
Ada B. Harris, 1926
Ada B. Harris graduated from Butler University in 1926 with a degree in education at the age of 60. Harris attended Butler at a later point in her life due to increasing teaching demands and new qualification requirements.
Before attending Butler, Ada taught at a segregated school in the Norwood neighborhood on Indianapolis’s southeast side. She was a lifelong educator and would later become the principal at Center Township School No. 5 and at the Harriet Beecher Stowe School IPS No. 64.
Beyond her life as a teacher, Harris was also an inventor. In 1893, Harris filed a U.S. patent for the first comb-style hair-straightening device. She took her prototype to showcase it to investors at the California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894, which was an extension of the World's Fair. The U.S. Patent Office officially approved her request in 1895.
Ada received her public notary license in 1917, which she used to help Black women register to vote and helped push through the women’s suffrage movement. She also challenged local racial prejudice and advocated for the welfare of Black Hoosiers in Indianapolis and across the state.
After graduating from Butler, she briefly took a teaching job in Rockville, Indiana and then passed away shortly thereafter in 1927 from a stroke. Throughout her life, Ada was a civic leader, reformer, educator, and entrepreneur with a huge impact on her community.
