Naomi Pollard Dobson

Naomi Willie Pollard Dobson (October 11, 1883 – August 14, 1971) was an American librarian, educator, and civic leader based in Chicago and Sioux City, Iowa. In 1905, she became the first Black woman to graduate from Northwestern University.

Early life and education Dobson was born Naomi Willie Pollard in Mexico, Missouri, on October 11, 1883. She was the third of eight children of John W. Pollard, a barber and Union army veteran, and Catherine Amanda Hughes Pollard, a seamstress. Her siblings all met with professional and personal success. Her brothers included NFL Pro Football Hall of Famer player and coach Fritz Pollard and advertising executive and businessman Luther J. Pollard.

The Pollard family moved to Chicago in 1886, where Naomi grew up as a member of the Black middle class and lived in the Rogers Park neighborhood, where the Pollards were the only Black family at the time. She entered Lake View High School in 1898 and graduated in June 1901. She enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University in the fall of 1901 and graduated in 1905, becoming the first Black woman to receive an academic degree (a Bachelor of Arts or AB) from Northwestern. One of only two Black students at Northwestern at the time, she probably lived with her parents, as Black students were barred from campus housing after white students protested.

Later life and death In 1952, Dobson and her husband retired to New York City, where their son worked as a pediatrician at Harlem Hospital. In New York she served as president of the Sydenham Hospital Women's Auxiliary and became a life member of the NAACP. After a period of hospitalization at Roosevelt Hospital, she died at her home in New York City on August 14, 1971, at the age of 87.

Her obituary appeared in the New York Amsterdam News and on the front page of the Sioux City Journal.