First African-American female to enroll at Indiana University
Carrie Parker was born Dec. 9, 1878, in North Carolina to former slaves. The family moved to Clinton County in Indiana while Parker still was an infant so that she would have a better opportunity for education. Parker graduated from Clinton High School and enrolled at Indiana University in 1898, three years after Marcellus Neal had become the first African-American man to receive an IU degree. To pay for school, Parker got a job cooking and cleaning for a faculty family. Exhausted after her first year of school, Parker took what she thought would be a short break in her education. Instead, she never returned but married and started a family. In 2017, a portrait of IU’s first female African-American student was unveiled in the Indiana Memorial Union as part of a “Women of Indiana University” art exhibit, and a scholarship was established in her name.