Lenora Moragne

Lenora Moragne was born on September 29, 1931, in Evanston, Illinois, to an African American family. Her parents were Linnie Lee and Joseph Moragne.^[1] She graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1950.^[2] She studied hospital dietetics and earned a BS in nutrition from Iowa State University in 1953. She worked at Community Hospital in Evanston as chief dietician from 1955 to 1957.^[3]

Moragne was granted a research fellowship at Cornell University in 1959 and earned her MS in nutrition there in 1963. As a research assistant at Cornell, she studied the effects of temperature on the nutritional quality of food.^[3] She earned her PhD in foods and nutrition from Cornell in 1969.^[4] Her doctoral dissertation was on "Influence of Household Differentiation on Food Habits among Low-Income Urban Negro Families".^[3]

Moragne was an assistant professor of foods and nutrition at North Carolina College from 1965 to 1967.^[4] From 1968 to 1971, Moragne worked for General Foods as a product publicist.^[3][4] She lectured in nutrition at Cornell in 1971 and 1972. During the same period, she taught foods and nutrition at Hunter College and Lehman College.^[3]

In 1972, Moragne was hired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service. She worked there until 1975, heading the Division of Nutrition Education and Training.^[3] In 1974, she authored Focus on Food, a junior high school textbook^[5] and a book on infant care.^[3] In 1977, Moragne joined the staff of the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. She was a legislative assistant for Kansas Senator Bob Dole from 1977 to 1979.^[1] She was appointed coordinator of nutrition policy for the Health and Human Services Division of the Committee in 1979.^[3] Ebony magazine called her a "grand lady" among the Black aides on Capitol Hill.^[6]

Moragne served on the board of directors of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics from 1981 to 1984.^[7] She founded Nutrition Legislation Services, a legislation-monitoring company based in Washington, DC. She was elected president of the Society for Nutrition Education in 1986,^[8] serving in that role in 1987 and 1988.^[9] She founded the newsletter Black Congressional Monitor in the late 1980s.^[1]

Moragne died on April 1, 2020, in Washington, DC.^[7]