Inabel B. Lindsay

Inabel Burns Lindsay (February 13, 1900, St. Joseph, Missouri – 1983 ) was an American social worker and the founding dean of Howard University School of Social Work.

Biography Inabel Burns Lindsay was the youngest of six children. She suffered from blindness at a young age, so two of her siblings, both teachers, instructed her. Encouraged by her mother and older brother to go to college, Lindsay enrolled at Howard University in 1916, and became actively involved with the campus activities, and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha. Soon after, she became the founder of the Howard Chapter of the Women's Suffrage League.

After getting her bachelor's degree and graduating with honors in 1920, she entered the New York School of Social Work. Afterward, Lindsay returned to Missouri due to her mother's failing health. After completing her degree in 1937, E. Franklin Frazier invited Lindsay to join the faculty at Howard and assist in the development of a new social work project. The two settle down in St. Louis where Arnett was in business. Although Lindsay was free from teaching she didn't immediately go back to work. Lindsay promised her husband that she would stay home for a year and try to conceive a child. After eleven months of Inabel's stay at home, she would slowly and eventually return to work. The Urban League would contact Inabel and ask if she would join Charles S. Johnson in conducting fieldwork in Springfield, Illinois - which she would.

Accomplishments Lindsay was the only female academic dean at any Washington DC area during the thirty-year period she worked at Howard. In 1966, she was a delegate for the 1966 White House Conference of Civil Rights, and she was on the District of Columbia Public Welfare Advisory Board in 1966. In 1974, the Metropolitan Washington chapter of the National Association of social workers named Lindsay the "Social Worker of the Year". Later in 1982, Lindsay was to be awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters.

In 1985, Howard's Board of Trustees named the building that houses the School of Social Work after her, the Dr. Inabel Burns Lindsay Hall.