The amazing Nathelyne Kennedy, the first black woman to earn an engineering license in Texas

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas -- Nathelyne Kennedy was a standout math student growing up in Conroe in the 1950's.

She said, "During my high school years, only thing I was thinking about is going to college to be a teacher, because that's what everyone did at that time. I didn't know about engineering."

It was a high school teacher that suggested engineering. It was 1955 schools were segregated, and the only HBCU in Texas that offered an engineering degree was Prairie View A&M University. She didn't find school that hard.

"No, it really wasn't. Uh, you know, my, my, my, I was on the honor roll, you know, uh, every year I was there, I graduated with honors and I was the only one in the engineering class that, that graduated with honors."

And she was also the only female engineering student.

"So everybody on the campus knew me because my name on the campus became MIS engineer. Oh. So everybody knew who, who they were talking about. There's that goes MIS engineer."

After Kennedy graduated she couldn't get a job in the Houston area so she moved to Chicago where she eventually convinced a firm to hire her. Twelve years later when she returned to Houston to open her namesake company, Nathelyne Kennedy and Associates, that Chicago firm partnered with her on her first project.

"Men were coming to me about going into business together, and I was wondering why these men asking me to go into business with them and, uh, and they were not minority men. So I said, well, if, if that's the case, then I, why do I need them? I could start my own firm. I only need myself. And so that's what I did."

Every Houstonian has driven on or visited a project her firm helped design: Interstate 10, 45, and 69, Beltway 8 and highways 288 and 99. Plus our major sports landmarks such as Minute Maid Park, NRG Stadium, and the Toyota Center. Kennedy owned her company 38 years, and sold it two years ago.

In 2016, Kennedy was named engineer of the year for the Houston area. One of her greatest honors next to this - the building named after her that houses the School of Architecture at Prairie View A&M University, not just her alma mater, but a school her relatives have attended since the 1890's.

Kennedy serves on a Prairie View foundation and has endowed a scholarship in her name, her work now supporting the next generation.

"I want to try to help them as much as I possibly can. People helping me along the way. And I tried to do the same thing with, with the young people, young engineers."