Untitled

Thomas was the first graduate of the Howard University art department and the first black woman to earn an MFA from Columbia University. After teaching in the Washington, D.C. public schools for 35 years, she began her professional career. She was among the color-field painters active in D.C., and in 1943, she was asked by James Vernon Herring and Alonzo Aden to join them in establishing the Barnett-Aden Gallery, the first African American gallery in that city. In 1971, when she was 80 years old, she became the first female African American artist to be recognized in a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.