UMD Mourns the Loss of Trailblazer Elaine Johnson Coates ’59

Born in Baltimore in 1937 to Elmira (Alma) Little Johnson, a domestic worker, and Robert Johnson Sr., a railroad porter, Coates excelled in school and was an Honor Society student at the then-segregated Frederick Douglass High School. Inspired by Black women teachers in her West Baltimore community, Coates was determined to pursue a career in education.

Following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, she decided to apply to the University of Maryland. After Coates’ high school guidance counselor refused to write her a letter of recommendation—telling her she was “aiming too high,” given her dark complexion, and should seek secretarial work instead—Coates’ mother encouraged her to write her own letter. Coates followed her mother’s advice and was admitted to UMD, where she received a full four-year scholarship. She entered the university  in 1955 at age 17, becoming the first person in her family to attend college. She and six other Black undergraduates were the first to live on UMD’s campus. She was the only student in the group to complete her degree and graduate four years later.

During their time at UMD, she and her peers endured racial discrimination and harassment. Coates recalled picking up the hallway phone in her dorm to hear racist insults and threats, and receiving lower grades than her white classmates for equivalent work. She also faced social isolation, sitting by herself in class and eating alone in the dining hall.

Despite these hardships, Coates still earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in education. However, she was unable to find work as a teacher because Maryland did not place Black teachers in predominantly white schools, and there were no teaching positions available in predominantly Black schools at the time. She instead accepted a role as a social worker at Baltimore’s Department of Social Services. Later, Coates taught business education at her high school alma mater and also taught young children when her then-husband James Zachariah Coates Jr.’s military service took the family to Stuttgart, Germany. 

In 1980, she earned her master’s degree in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She obtained her certification as a Licensed Certified Social Worker–Clinical, provided social services to pediatric and adult trauma patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and became a supervisor and mentor to many. In 2006, she retired after a nearly 40-year career as a teacher and social worker and continued counseling as a volunteer.

In a 2019 oral history interview preserved in UMD Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives, Coates commented on her experiences and their meaning today, saying, “There will be no finite end to this journey. It continues. … You will have to endure. Maybe in a different way. But fight for it. It’s worth fighting for, it’s worth hanging in there for.”

The University of Maryland has bestowed many honors upon Coates in recent years. In 2019, at the Alumni Association’s first annual Celebration of Terps: Featuring the Maryland Awards, she became the inaugural recipient of an award named in her honor, which recognizes a UMD graduate who has made a significant and sustained contribution that fosters diversity and inclusion nationally and/or globally. That same year, she addressed the graduating class at Commencement, and in 2020, Pines awarded her an honorary doctorate in public service. In 2022, the university dedicated Johnson-Whittle Hall, a new residence hall named for Coates and Hiram Whittle, the first Black undergraduate student admitted to UMD, in 1951.