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Johnnetta Cole, anthropologist and educator, was the first African-American woman president of Spelman College. After teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles and directing the black studies program at Washington State University at Pullman, Cole taught in the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where from 1981 to 1983 she was provost of undergraduate education. In 1983 she moved to Hunter College, where she directed the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. From 1987 - June 1997, Cole served as the seventh president of Spelman College, the oldest African-American women's college in the United States. She was committed to making the school a center for scholarship about African-American women. Calling herself "Sister President," she became known as a strong advocate for the liberal arts curriculum in a changing society. Cole's writings focus on race, gender, ethnicity, and class. In addition to scholarly articles and a regular column in McCall's magazine, she wrote Anthropology for the Eighties: Introductory Readings (1982), All American Women: Lives that Divide, Ties that Bind (1986), Anthropology for the Nineties (1988), and Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President (1993).