DaytonDailyNews.com

WILBERFORCE — Yvonne Walker-Taylor, who served as the first woman president of Wilberforce University, from 1984 to 1988, died Friday. She was 90.

Mrs. Walker-Taylor also was the only American woman to succeed her father as president of a university. Bishop D. Ormonde Walker was the 10th president of the nation's oldest private, historically black university, and Mrs. Walker-Taylor was the 16th.

A native of New Bedford, Mass., she was attended college at Wilberforce, Boston University and the University of Kansas. She joined the faculty at Wilberforce in the late 1950s and is credited with introducing cooperative education to the campus in 1964.

After leaving the University, Mrs. Walker-Taylor served as Distinguished Presidential Professor of Education at Central State University and was on the board of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center.

She was named to the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 2000, and the African-American CEOs of the Miami Valley honored her as a Top 10 Black Woman in 2003.

Funeral arrangements are pending and will be handled by McCullough Funeral Home of Xenia.