Who is Nancy Randolph Davis?

Monday, February 5, 2024

When you take a walk on our famous brick Monroe Street, you may notice a life-size sculpture of a civil rights pioneer in front of the Nancy Randolph Davis building.

We are celebrating the 75th anniversary of Nancy Randolph Davis’ enrollment at OSU. Davis was the first African American student to attend Oklahoma A&M College in 1949 and received her master’s degree in home economics, now referred to as Human Sciences, from the university in 1952. Initially, she was required to sit outside of the classroom, separate from her white classmates, until her fellow students petitioned for her right to sit among her peers.

Davis taught home economics in Oklahoma high schools for 43 years and continued to pave the way for so many after her as an active member of the civil rights movement. She worked as an adviser for the Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council and in 2008 was awarded the Oklahoma Human Rights Commission Lifetime Achievement Award.

OSU has honored her legacy by awarding her with the Enhancing Human Lives Award from the College of Human Sciences, the OSU Distinguished Alumni Award, as well as being inducted into the OSU Alumni Hall of Fame in 2018. In the same year, Davis was recognized by the state with a three-mile stretch of I-35 west of Stillwater, named the Nancy Randolph Davis Memorial Highway.

She was also inducted into the Oklahoma Afro American Hall of Fame and in 2015 was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma African American Educators Hall of Fame.

Nancy Randolph Davis was 88 years old when she passed away in 2015. Yet her spirit lives on in the lives of each current Cowboy she broke barriers for and every single Oklahoma student she impacted in her 43 years of public education.

“I didn’t set out to make history, I just wanted to earn my education.” – Nancy Randolph Davis