Fidelia Adams Johnson

Adams was born in Grambling, Louisiana, the elder daughter of Charles P. Adams and Martha Norman Adams.^[1][2] Her father was the founder and president of Grambling State University.^[3][4] Her grandfather Lewis Adams helped found Tuskegee University.^[5][6] She was named for Fidelia Jewett, a white philanthropist who helped fund the founding of the North Louisiana Agricultural and Industrial Institute.^[1]

She graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1929. She lettered in basketball all four years at Tuskegee, and was team captain.^[7] She earned a master's degree at the University of Iowa in 1945,^[8] with further studies at Antioch University and Michigan State University.^[9] She was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.^[1]

Johnson taught home economics at Grambling State University, where she also coached women's basketball, chaired the home economics department, served as dean of women, and was a member of the school's board of directors.^[4] She was known as "Mama Fi" on campus.^[1] She launched Grambling's "field service program", an innovative outreach project. She also started the school's home economics education, early childhood education, and institutional management majors.^[4][6] She retired from the university in 1970.^[9][10]

In 1925 Adams spoke at the third annual Hampton Builders' Conference in Virginia.^[11] In 1974 she was inducted into the Tuskegee University Athletics Hall of Fame.^[12] In 1978 she gave an oral history interview for the Black Women Oral History Project.^[13][14] She was inducted into the Grambling Hall of Fame in 1982.^[9]

Adams married fellow Tuskegee alumnus and Grambling sports coach Ozias Johnson in 1934.^[15] Her husband died in 1980, and she died in 1996, at the age of 91, in Ruston, Louisiana.^[16] The Charles P. Adams House in Grambling was named to the National Register of Historic Places, and donated to the Grambling State University Foundation.^[17]