Henrie Monteith Treadwell

Henrie Monteith Treadwell died on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at the age of 80. No place of death or cause has been made public at this time.

<cite index="3-1">USC mourns first Black alumna, civil rights trailblazer Henrie Monteith Treadwell</cite> was the headline the University of South Carolina used on October 29, 2026, when it formally announced her death, two days after she died. <cite index="4-1">Henrie Monteith Treadwell, a public health champion whose enrollment more than 60 years ago marked the University of South Carolina's desegregation, died Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026.</cite>

The university's tribute, written by Rebekah Friedman, recalled that <cite index="4-2">Treadwell, along with the late Robert Anderson and James Solomon Jr., registered for classes on Sept. 11, 1963</cite>, the day the university was desegregated. University President Michael Amiridis said in a statement that <cite index="4-3">with the passing of Henrie Monteith Treadwell, the last of USC's three brave desegregation pioneers, we acknowledge the profound role she played in defining our values as an institution</cite>, and added that <cite index="4-4">Henrie made clear that she broke racial barriers at USC not in a spirit of fear, but with great determination and hope, knowing that she was leading a path that others must and would follow</cite>.

Bobby Donaldson, executive director of USC's Center for Civil Rights History and Research, also paid tribute, describing her as <cite index="4-6">a trailblazer whose courage changed the University of South Carolina, the state of South Carolina, and the lives of countless people who followed her path</cite>.

No funeral or memorial service details have been announced publicly as of this writing. This page will be updated once service information and further details about her death are confirmed.

Henrie Dobbins Monteith was born in 1946 in Columbia, South Carolina, to R. Rebecca Monteith. She grew up on farmland acquired by her grandparents, Rachel Hull and Henry C. Monteith, at Mason Road and North Main Street. Her grandmother, a teacher and an early member of the Niagara Movement and the local NAACP, founded the Monteith School, one of Richland County's first public schools for Black children, where Henrie's mother taught and later served as principal.

Her aunts Modjeska Monteith Simkins and Emma Monteith Wheeler and her uncle Dr. Henry Dobbins Monteith were active in the early civil rights movement. As a girl she took part in her aunt Modjeska's clothing and food drives for Black families targeted for their part in Briggs v. Elliott, one of the cases consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education. She later described social justice as simply "what we did, and we did it all the time."

She attended Blessed Martin De Porres School, a Catholic school in Columbia, and then St. Francis de Sales High School in Powhatan, Virginia. According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, schooling out of state was a way for her mother to shield her until it was time to challenge the University of South Carolina's whites-only admissions policy.

In May 1962, shortly before graduating at the top of her high school class, she applied to the University of South Carolina and was rejected. Her family, with the help of Modjeska Simkins, engaged the civil rights lawyer Matthew J. Perry Jr. At trial the registrar, Rollin Godfrey, confirmed that he had returned her application because of her race. The court ruled in her favour. Because the suit was a class action, James Solomon Jr. and Robert Anderson were also able to apply.

She had registered at the College of Notre Dame after her rejection, but chose South Carolina and submitted her new application on 13 August 1963. Less than two weeks later her uncle's home was bombed. On 11 September 1963 she, Solomon and Anderson registered without violence, becoming the first Black students at the university since Reconstruction. All three experienced harassment, including threatening calls, late-night knocking on doors and racial slurs. She graduated in 1965 with a BS in biochemistry.

She then earned a master's degree from Boston University and a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Atlanta University, followed by postdoctoral work in public health at Harvard University. From 1975 to 1985 she chaired the division of mathematics and natural sciences at Morris Brown College in Atlanta. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation recruited her from Harvard, and as a program director she oversaw a portfolio of health grants and worked on Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved, a multimillion-dollar national initiative. Her work took her to communities from Alabama to Zimbabwe.

In 2003 she joined the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta as founding director of Community Voices and research professor of community health and preventive medicine. Her research focused on health care for underserved populations, including the health of young African American men, oral health in poor communities, prison health and health policy. In October 2025 the University of South Carolina Press published her memoir, Come Along with Me: An African American Woman's Journey for Justice.

She was married to Harold Treadwell, who died before her. According to the university's Carolinian magazine, her children encouraged her to move back to Atlanta after his death while continuing her work in public health, which led to her role at Morehouse School of Medicine. News reports said she was survived by three children.

Her lawsuit opened the University of South Carolina to Black students, and she is remembered as its first Black woman graduate. In 2024 the university unveiled a 12-foot bronze monument on the Horseshoe, commissioned by its Board of Trustees, honouring her, Robert Anderson and James Solomon Jr. She is among the subjects of the 2020 book 101 Women Who Shaped South Carolina.

Reflecting on her life in 2025, she said: "It's a way of opening doors for people who do not themselves have the key to that door. Taking the walk into the university was just an example of what I've continued to do throughout my career."