Henrie Monteith Treadwell, whose legal challenge helped desegregate the University of South Carolina before she built a career in public health, died Oct. 27, the university announced Thursday.

Her life linked two struggles: gaining access to an education and helping communities gain access to better health.

A student who challenged a closed door

Treadwell filed the lawsuit that led to USC’s integration when she was 16. On Sept. 11, 1963, she registered for classes alongside Robert Anderson and James Solomon Jr. They were the university’s first Black students admitted since Reconstruction.

In 1965, Treadwell earned a biochemistry degree and became USC’s first Black graduate since Reconstruction. The distinction matters: the university had admitted Black students during Reconstruction, before segregation returned.

USC honored the three students with a bronze monument on its Horseshoe in 2024. In its Oct. 29 remembrance, the university described Treadwell as the last surviving member of that trio.

Her work continued beyond the campus

A 2025 university profile traced how Treadwell moved from biochemistry into community health. After graduate study at Boston University and Atlanta University, a Harvard public-health fellowship helped shape her interest in problems that medicine alone could not resolve.

Her work with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation took her beyond the United States. She later led the Community Voices project at Morehouse School of Medicine, focusing on people whose needs were often overlooked.

The profile described research on men’s health, oral health in poor communities and health issues in the prison system. It also described her concern for families affected by incarceration and poverty.

Morehouse’s own account of her oral-health work shows that broader approach. The book Oral Health in America, which she co-edited with Caswell A. Evans, examined unequal access to dental care and possible solutions, including the barriers faced by people without insurance, people with disabilities and older adults.

A legacy of access

Treadwell’s story does not end with the familiar image of three students walking onto a segregated campus. Her later work asked who was still being left outside other institutions and services.

That connection between educational opportunity and community health is central to the record she leaves behind.