I came to Duke in the third class of African Americans. My hero, heroine, she-ro was [Wilhelmina] “Mimi” Reuben-Cooke. In those first years I had Mimi. She was truly an icon because she was so smart and she was always gracious. And if something was bugging me, I could go over, knock on the dorm door and ask to speak to her.
The reminders of where we, as African Americans, came from and who we were, were the people who worked at Duke. They were the people who saved us. They saved me because I didn’t have a way to get off campus. I didn’t have the faculty role models that the majority of students had. They just took it for granted. I had Mimi to emulate and she was such a superior academic student that it set the bar very high for all of us.
Brenda Armstrong T’70, H’79
Professor, associate dean, and director of admissions
Duke School of Medicine