Alma Woodsey Thomas was born on September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978, she was an African-American Expressionist painter and art educator best known for her colorful abstract paintings. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C. and The Washington Post described her as a force in the Washington Color School. The Wall Street Journal described her in 2016 as a previously "underappreciated artist" who is more recently recognized for her "exuberant" works, noteworthy for their pattern, rhythm and color. Thomas remains an influence to young and old as she was a cornerstone for the Fine Arts at Howard University, started a successful art career later in her life, and took major strides during times of segregation as an African-American female artist. Thomas believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race, creating works with a focus on accidental beauty and the abstraction of color. Alma Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, as the oldest of four children to John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer. She was creative as a child, although her serious artistic career began much later in life. While growing up, Thomas displayed her artistic capabilities, and enjoyed making small pieces of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly out of clay from the river behind her childhood home. Despite a growing interest in the arts, Thomas was "not allowed" to go into art museums as a child. She was given music lessons as well, and her mother played the violin. In school, she was known to excel at math, science, and architecture specifically interested her. In 1907 when Thomas was 16, the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to escape racial violence in Georgia and to seek the benefits of the public school system of Washington. Although still segregated, the nation's capital was known to offer more opportunities for African-Americans than most other cities. As a child, she displayed artistic interest, making puppets and sculptures at home. She expressed interest in being an architect, but the unusualness of women in that profession limited her. Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. After graduating from high school in 1911, she studied kindergarten education at Miner Normal School until 1913. She served as a substitute teacher in Washington until 1914 when she obtained a permanent teaching position on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Two years later, in 1916, she started teaching kindergarten at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware, staying there until 1923. In 1963, she walked in the March on Washington with her friend Lillian Evans. She portrayed the march in a 1964 painting. Mary Beth Edelson's Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles; Alma Thomas was among those notable women artists. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement." Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978, still living in the same house that her family moved into upon their arrival in Washington in 1906

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