Miss Oseola McCarty is an 87 Mississippian extraordinarily committed to educating African Americans  by setting up a scholarship fund so that African Ameri-cans could have the education she never had. 

She was born in Wayne County, Miss. Her brown hands are gnarled with arthritis. They are hands that show that she has spent a life time washing and ironing other people's clothes. Her customers brought their washing and ironing to her frame home for more than 75 years. She completed 6th grade as Eureka Elementary School. She has done laundry for three generations of Mississippi families. She charged $1.50 to $2.00 a bundle. She started saving money after the war, she says, when she started making $10.00 a bundle. She cooked for others. She sold candy at the schoolhouse. From her own savings, Miss Oseola McCarty donated 150,000 dollars to the University of Southern Mississippi to set up a scholarship for African American. I want to help somebody's child go to college, she says. I just want it to go to someone who will appreciate it and learn. I'm old and I'm not going to live always. Her gift establishes an endowed Oseola McCarty Scholarship, with priority consideration given to those deserving African-American students enrolling at the University of Southern Miss-issippi who clearly demonstrate a financial need.   

Dr. Ruth W. Hayre is an 83 year old African American extraordinarily committed to educating African Americans by setting up a scholarship fund so that African Americans could have the education she had.  She was an accomplished teacher at every level of education.   For Philadelphia, she was the first African-American high school principal, the first female African-American District Superintendent, and the first female African-American Board of Educa-tion President.  Her paternal grandfather, Richard Robert Wright, started her family's education roots. After Emancipation, he left Dal-ton, Ga., for an education at General Oliver Otis Howard's new school for Blacks, now Howard University.  Her paternal grandfather was a founder and president of Georgia State College. Her maternal grandfather, William H. Crogman, was a member of Atlanta University's first class. Her grandfather Wright organized the first Georga State Fair in 1891; four years later her grandfather Crog-man was chairman of the first International State Exposition in Atlanta.  Her parents married at the Crogman home on the campus of Clark University in 1909 and moved to Philadelphia.  She was 16 when she entered the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in education.  After she got her master's degree, she began her college teaching at Arkansas State College.  She was a woman with Lincoln Continental Town Cars, diamond rings and mink coats, having lived a life in which money was no problem.  We cite her here because she wanted to do something significant for the education of African Americans. With part of her retirement annuity and contributions she solicited, she set up a scholarship fund to take 116 boys and girls through six years of public school life into college, their college tuition paid.