English: Biography: Catherine Cardozo Lewis contributed her organizational talents and business skills to Cardozo Sisters Hairstylists, founded by her sister Elizabeth Cardozo Barker in 1928. The youngest child of Francis L. and Blanche Warrick Cardozo, Catherine attended a convent school in Philadelphia and Spelman Seminary before graduating from Dunbar High School. While attending Hunter College, she married Harold O. Lewis and soon transferred to Pratt Institute to study dressmaking. After her husband's graduation from college, the couple moved to Washington, where Mrs. Lewis worked in the Census Bureau until she became ill. She returned to work first as a volunteer secretary to the local Rochdale Co-op and the Garfield Heights Citizens' Association. She then worked at the Co-op as a paid employee, earning bookkeeping. In 1949 she joined Cardozo Sisters, serving as general manager until her retirement in 1965. She has continued to assist her husband, a member of the history department at Howard University, with his research on Black seamen.

Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick
Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Collection: Black Women Oral History Project
Research Guide: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp

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