Harriet Elizabeth Byrd
American politician in Wyoming (1926-2015)
Harriet Elizabeth Byrd (April 20, 1926 – January 27, 2015) was an American politician and educator from Wyoming who was the first African-American elected to the Wyoming Legislature.
Early life
Harriet Elizabeth Rhone was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 20, 1926, to Robert C. Rhone and Sudie Smith Rhone. Her grandfather, Charles J. Rhone, came to Wyoming in 1876. She graduated from Cheyenne High School in 1944. She graduated from West Virginia State University with a bachelor of arts in education in 1949, and the University of Wyoming with a master of arts in education in 1976.
Byrd applied to teach at the Laramie County School District, but was rejected due to her being black. She worked as a teacher at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base for ten years. She was hired by the Laramie County School District in 1959, and taught for twenty-seven years. She was the first fully certified full-time black teacher in Wyoming. Byrd was a member of the Wyoming State Advisory Council for Title III for seven years and chair of the Cheyenne Civic Center Advisory Board.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5664104. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2015, 1876 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harriet Elizabeth Byrd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.