Ruth Cave Flowers was one of the first African American women to graduate from the University of Colorado. However, due to racial discrimination, she couldn’t find a job. She was forced to leave Colorado to find a job in the segregated South.

She found a job teaching French and Latin at Claflin College in South Carolina from 1924-28, returning to Boulder in 1929-30 to care for her grandmother and get an M.A. from the University of Colorado in French and Education. She then moved to Washington, D.C. and taught at Dunbar High School from 1931 to 1945. While there she attended Robert F. Terrell Law School at night and received her law degree in 1945.

From 1951 to 1959, Dr. Flowers was Associate Professor of Spanish at North Carolina College in Durham (now North Carolina Central University). In 1959, Dr. Flowers and her son Harold returned to Boulder to live, and she was hired as the head of the foreign languages department at Fairview High School, a position that she held until her retirement in 1967.

source:

https://www.colorado.edu/libraries/2018/04/04/legacy-ruth-cave-flowers