Valree Wynn, a professor emerita at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, died on September 25. She was 99 years old.
A native of Rockwell, Texas, Professor Wynn, the daughter of a sharecropper, was a graduate of Langston University in Oklahoma. She was the first Black woman to earn a master’s degree in English and the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in English at Oklahoma State University. In 1965, she became the first Black faculty member at Cameron University. She taught at Cameron Univerity for two decades. In 1990, Dr. Wynn was the first African American speaker at a Cameron University commencement.
Dr. Wynn served as president of the Board of Regents for Oklahoma Colleges. In 1996 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame and in 2005 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.
An oral history interview of Dr. Wynn conducted by Oklahoma State University can be found here.
