Luke Taylor reports in the September 4, 2025 editions of The News-Gazette:
Mildred Barnes Griggs knew how to make a first impression.
She will be remembered for many firsts: She was the first Black dean of University of Illinois College of Education and the first Black person to be promoted through all the ranks at the university, from assistant to full professor.
She will also be remembered for her passion for justice, pursuing a degree and career in law after retiring from the UI in order to advocate for Black farmers in her native Arkansas.
But beyond her impressive accomplishments and career, Mrs. Griggs, who died in July at age 83, is remembered by those who knew her best for her ability to connect with others, valuable advice and quick sense of humor.
For many of them, it isn’t hard to remember their first time meeting her.
“We started our relationship, the very beginning of it, over dinner,” said her husband, Alvin Griggs.
He was on the UI’s track team as a sprinter at the time. A teammate asked if he’d like to go to dinner at the “practice house,” and at first, he said no.
Practice houses were features of home-economics courses at some universities, including the UI, where students were required to “keep house” for varying periods of time, including cooking, cleaning, sewing and sometimes even raising real babies.
When Griggs said he wouldn’t be going to dinner, another teammate he considered a rival offered to take his place, which quickly changed his mind.
Mrs. Griggs, then Ms. Barnes, was one of the students keeping house that week.
“I had seen her on campus but never spoken to her,” Griggs said. “I used to tease her about cooking and sewing, but she was good at both.”
Home-economics programs were in the process of fading out of most universities, which meant Mrs. Griggs would need to refocus. She decided to move to education.
“She became interested in the family and education and continued to lead and do her research for many, many years,” said Lizanne DeStefano, who served as associate dean of the College of Education under Mrs. Griggs and is now a psychology professor at Georgia Tech. “It’s sometimes very hard for academics to make that kind of pivot, but she was able to do it because I think what I always respected about Mildred is that she had a great sense of self.”
DeStefano said that it was valuable to have a mentor like her who was managing not only a career and family, but active roles in the community.
Her first meeting with Mrs. Griggs was at a College of Education meet-and-greet early in her time at the UI.
“I saw this striking woman. She was very beautiful, always dressed really elegantly,” DeStefano said. “I ended up talking to her, and we had just a regular conversation. I knew, obviously, that she was a full professor, and very much advanced in her career compared to me, but she took an interest in me and also in my family and my husband.”
That interest continued, DeStefano said, with Mrs. Griggs always checking in about the family, following her career and offering advice as needed.
The pair became close friends as well as colleagues through their time at the UI.
DeStefano was struck by Mrs. Griggs’ support of younger faculty and ability to connect the College of Education with the rest of the university.
“There probably isn’t a month that goes by that I don’t remember some sort of scenario with Mildred in which she taught me something,” DeStefano said.
Mrs. Griggs was also a role model to Barbara Suggs Mason, a former teacher and school administrator.
At their first meeting, Suggs Mason was only 12 years old. Her cousin, a beautician, had asked her to be one of her two models for a cosmetology show.
“Mildred Griggs was the other model,” Suggs Mason said. “As a shy and awkward girl on the threshold of adolescence, I was immediately awestruck by this beautiful, confident and genuinely friendly young Black woman.”
Later, their families became neighbors and both Suggs Mason and Mrs. Griggs attended Bethel AME Church.
Suggs Mason said she will never forget Mrs. Griggs speaking at church about the contributions of those in the community who don’t fall under W.E.B. Dubois’ “Talented Tenth” theory of a leadership class of Black Americans.
“It made a lifelong impression on me and how I reflect on our history,” Suggs Mason said.
Mrs. Griggs also played a role in encouraging her to further her studies, even writing a letter of recommendation for her when Suggs Mason applied to be a superintendent.
Before Mrs. Griggs came to Champaign-Urbana, she lived on her father’s farm in Arkansas.
Alvin Griggs said her father was a World War I veteran who returned home, bought the land and cleared it himself.
Mrs. Griggs was one of 10 children on a farm with chickens, cows, ducks, geese, mules and hunting dogs, not to mention produce.
“She knew how to milk a cow. Hated it,” Griggs said. “Always talked about early mornings, getting up to go milk the cow.”
Cow-milking aside, she learned a thing or two on the farm: After she and Alvin bought a large plot near her father’s property, Mrs. Griggs tended the peach orchard and always turned a profit from it.
She also gained a respect for farmers and a passion for her Southern heritage that she would carry throughout her life.
It’s how she and Champaign County NAACP President Minnie Pearson bonded while they were both students.
“I was coming out of the education building, and I heard somebody say, ‘Hello.’ I said, ‘Hey.’ She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Hey,’” Pearson said. “She said, ‘You’re from the South, aren’t you?’”
From that first meeting, Pearson said she gravitated toward Mrs. Griggs’ confidence and welcoming nature.
They would soon become sisters in Delta Sigma Theta. Mrs. Griggs continued to be active in the alumnae chapter of the sorority later in her life as well.
Even as sorority sisters and through their lifelong friendship, Pearson said Mrs. Griggs was a mentor to her in many ways.
Whether it was advice about personal relationships or her teaching career, Pearson said her friend always told her what she needed to hear, even if it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
Many little moments between the two of them stand out to Pearson: arguing over the pronunciation of “pecan,” waving from her car as Mrs. Griggs went on her daily 10-mile run and earning nicknames that she knew were signs that Mrs. Griggs liked her.
“It was just a joy to know her,” Pearson said. “She had a spirit about her that would lift your spirits.”
Mrs. Griggs studied at Arkansas AM&N College, now called the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, for her undergraduate degree before coming to the UI for her master’s and Ph.D.
It was there she stayed for most of her career, even though Alvin Griggs said she had opportunities at other universities.
“She said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ She stayed in that (College of Education) building for her two degrees and working and enjoyed it,” Griggs said. “She didn’t have very much to do after she retired, except she ended up going to law school.”
Pearson said she’d been surprised at her friend’s choice to pursue a second career, but her husband wasn’t. He’d heard his wife talk about her interest in law for years.
“Now she’s in her late 60s, and she felt like she was a young student,” he said. “I used to see her leaving the house — the way she was dressed, with blue jeans on, she didn’t do that when she was in the education building.”
Fellow students called her “grandma,” but Griggs said she didn’t mind; it wasn’t any stranger than her family nickname being “Father” because she used to tell her brothers what to do.
Mrs. Griggs graduated from law school in 2003; a few years later, she and Alvin moved to her home state of Arkansas.
There, she returned to her roots in a way, using her legal training to fight on behalf of Black farmers who didn’t know how to navigate government resources or had been discriminated against.
Alongside working directly with farmers in dealings with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she worked as a consultant for the East Arkansas Enterprise Community and served as director of the Arkansas Delta Seeds of Change.
Her work did not go unnoticed: Mrs. Griggs was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and received the Illinois Mothers Association Medallion of Honor, among other honors.
