Elbert Frank Cox was born in Evansville, Indiana, in December 1895. He earned the baccalaureate degree from the University of Indiana in 1917 with a major in mathematics. After serving in the US Army in France during World War I, he returned to pursue a career in teaching. Before enrolling in the graduate mathematics program at Cornell University in September 1922, he taught mathematics in the public schools in Henderson, Kentucky and later at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1925 he was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree in mathematics from Cornell. He is the first known Black person to receive the Ph.D. in Mathematics in the United States.