Ruth Bluford Anderson was a University of Northern Iowa Associate Professor of Social Work, specialized in researching minority alcohol programs and public policy, and its effect on public services administration. She served as co-chair of the first statewide institute on the problems of women alcoholics, and was a member of the Iowa Substance Abuse Commission.

Anderson contributed her leadership abilities to the Iowa Coalition of Community Organizations, the Iowa Mental Health Association, and local and interstate branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 1988, she was elected to the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, the first African-American woman to serve on a county board of supervisors in the state.

In Anderson’s autobiography, published by the University of Iowa School of Social Work, she talks about growing up poor in Iowa, and then working her way through college to become a professor of social work and helping others who found themselves in similar situations as she did as a child.

- from https://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/611782789244862464/voices-from-the-stacks
#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory