Olivia Frost Obituary
1915 - 2009
Olivia Pleasants Frost was born on September 28, 1915 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Her parents were Dr. William Henry Pleasants, and Theresa Mitchell. Dr. Frost graduated from Hunter College, NY in 1936 with a bachelor's in mathematics and statistics and a minor in economics. She went on to earn a masters degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from New York University. Her achievements are all the more impressive given that she attained her first degrees at a time when less than five per cent of the U. S. population were college graduates. She built a successful career at a time when few women had high-level professional occupations. Already in 1937, after graduation from Hunter, she was engaged in research concerning estimates of employment and the labor supply. Shortly after her first child was born, in 1942, she was tapped by the U.S. Department of Commerce to serve as an economic analyst to assist in the war effort. In this role, she prepared reports determining the needs of foreign countries for essential chemicals. She later transferred to the National War Labor Board as a wage analyst.
In her career as a researcher, Dr. Frost is best known for her work addressing discrimination and poverty in New York City. Her expertise in math and economics qualified her well to work as the research director for the Urban League of Greater New York, where she prepared research material designed to improve social services for African-Americans. Her work with the Committee on Civil Rights in East Manhattan in the early 1950s helped document discrimination by sending out Black and White teams to restaurants and to pose as homebuyers. Her masters thesis dealt with Harlem real estate markets and her doctoral dissertation explored the effects of training programs on young, low-income African Americans. Frost applied this graduate training to research involvements with the Harlem Mortgage Improvement Council, the NYC Youth Board, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, the Community Action Program of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Head Start, and the NAACP among many others.
Frost said of her work, "My research has been to provide documentation and factual data relating to strengths and needs of the citizens of the low income and minority communities of the city and to indicate inequities in services." Her work had significant impacts. Her study of the lending policies of savings banks in Harlem contributed to the passing of a state law to facilitate mortgage loans in predominantly Black areas in NYC. Other studies resulted in the revamping of social services for Black youth and families. Her overall contributions were recognized by The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture which houses her papers; seventeen boxes of her research and publication materials reside in the Library's collections. Her contributions have been the subject of research papers of doctoral students at Princeton and Yale.
Olivia Pleasants Frost is survived by her three children, Carolyn Olivia, James William, and Charles Sumner Jr.; and her grandchildren Kayode, James and Raquel.
Published by New York Times from Sep. 11 to Sep. 12, 2009.