Ophelia Settle Egypt

Ophelia Settle Egypt (1903-1984) was a social worker and sociologist who conducted some of the first interviews with former slaves. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and from Columbia University School of Social Work.[1] She was a researcher for the black sociologist Charles S. Johnson at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee from 1928-1930[2] where she conducted one hundred interviews[3] with elderly former slaves. Her interviews were part of Fisk University's publication “Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Accounts of Negro Ex-Slaves (Social Science Source Document No. 1).”[4] She studied medicine and sociology at Washington University on a scholarship, but had to receive her lessons privately from a tutor since she was a black woman. Later, she became a social worker in southeast Washington, D.C.[5] and was the director of their first Planned Parenthood clinic,[6] Parklands Planned Parenthood Clinic,[7] which was named for her in 1981,[4] three years after she died.[8]