Wood (Gladys) Wood is born in Boston.

A descendant of enslaved people and one of 13 children, Gladys Wood receives a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Boston State College (then the Teachers College of the City of Boston), where her thesis is entitled “Nutrition and Its Relationship to the Noonday Lunch of the Growing Child.” She begins teaching in the Boston public schools in 1940, becomes a vice principal in 1957 and the first African-American principal of a Boston school in 1966.* Wood dies in Milton on August 3, 2017.