 After five years of intense work and the death of her mother she applied for and received a four-year scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.During her senior year at Spelman she met and married Ulysses “Pete” Simpson Lane (d. 1970), her first and only wito.She went on to attain a master's degree in English at Atlanta University in 1956, and, in 1967, became the first African-American woman to earn a Phd from Louisiana State University.