Thomas became the first person to earn a degree from Howard University's newly established fine arts department in 1924.
On June 9, 1924, Alma Thomas graduated from Howard University, becoming the first graduate of the university's newly founded fine arts department. She had initially enrolled to study home economics but was encouraged by professor and architect James V. Herring, founder of the department, to switch her focus to art.
This achievement was historically significant because it marked one of the earliest formal art educations available to African Americans at a major institution, at a time when opportunities for Black artists to receive rigorous academic training were exceedingly rare. Howard University, one of the nation's premier historically Black universities, was establishing itself as a center for African American intellectual and artistic life, and Thomas's pioneering enrollment and graduation helped validate the fine arts department's mission.
Her degree opened the door to a long teaching career and later to her own celebrated practice as a painter. It also situated her within the circle of influential Black artists and scholars associated with Howard, including Herring and later Alonzo Aden, who ran the Barnett-Aden Gallery that gave Thomas some of her earliest exhibition opportunities. This first laid the groundwork for Thomas's later firsts in the American art establishment.