Elaine J. Coates

Elaine Johnson Coates (September 15, 1937 – February 14, 2026) was an American social worker and educator. She was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Life and career Coates was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 15, 1937. She was the daughter of a domestic worker and railroad porter and attended the then-segregated Frederick Douglass High School. Following the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Coates enrolled in the University of Maryland in 1955 where she was one of the few African American undergraduates allowed to live on campus. Her high school counselor refused to write Coates a letter of recommendation suggesting she find a job instead; at her mother's urging, Coates wrote her own letter, ultimately earning a four-year scholarship. She resided in Caroline Hall and would frequently receive threats and insults, and frequently received unfair treatment from her professors. She was a member of the Red Cross Club. Coates graduated in 1959 from the College of Education. She was the first undergraduate African American student to graduate from University of Maryland, College Park. Six other black students entered in the same class as Coates in 1955. She went on to work in providing social services to pediatric and adult trauma patients at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. After retiring in 2006, she continued counseling as a volunteer.

Coates died on February 14, 2026, at the age of 88.

Awards and honors In April, 2019, Coates was the first to receive the University of Maryland Alumni Association's new annual award meant "to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions to fostering diversity and inclusion nationally and globally." The award was then named in her honor, the "Elaine Johnson Coates Award."

Coates received an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland in May, 2020.

In July, 2020, University of Maryland president Darryll Pines announced that one of the university's new residence halls would be named to honor Coates having been the university's first African-American woman to graduate.