Who She Was
Flemmie Pansy Kittrell was a nutrition scientist and teacher who spent her life helping children and families grow up healthy. She was born in 1904 in Henderson, North Carolina, to a family of sharecroppers, and she started working as a cook and nursemaid when she was only 11 years old. In college, a professor told her about Ellen Swallow Richards, and Kittrell realized that studying food and family life was real science. In 1936, she became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in nutrition, graduating from Cornell University. She went on to lead the home economics department at Howard University for 28 years, from 1944 to 1972, and traveled the world studying how families eat.
Why She Matters
Dr. Kittrell showed that a person can be well fed and still miss important vitamins and minerals. In 1947, she studied nutrition in Liberia and found that more than 90 percent of the people she surveyed lacked key vitamins, a problem known as "hidden hunger." Her work brought worldwide attention to the issue. Back home, she showed that health problems in many Black communities were tied to unfair treatment in housing, jobs, and medical care, not to bad choices. She also built a nursery school program for young children and their parents at Howard University, and it became an early model for Head Start. For young people, her story shows that a nutrition expert can change lives in a neighborhood, a country, and around the world.
