Ruth Lucas, born November 28, 1920 in Stamford, Connecticut, became the first African American woman in the US Air Force to be promoted to colonel. She graduated from the Tuskegee University in Alabama in 1942.
Shorly after, she enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and was one of the first black women to attend the now Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. She transfered from the Army to the Air Force in 1947.
She was stationed at an Air Force base in Tokyo in the 1950s where she taught English to Japanese students. She received a master's degree in educational psychology from Columbia University in 1957.
When Lucas was promoted to colonel in 1968, she was a general education and counseling services assistant in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for education at the Pentagon. She retired from the Air Force in 1970.
She passed away in March 2013 in Washington, DC.
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