The daughter of a reverend, a pastor of Connecticut’s first African-American church, and a teacher and amateur artist, after graduating in 1914 from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Waring obtained a scholarship to study Romanticism in Paris. She focused her artistic efforts on portraiture. In 1927 she took part at the first exhibition of African American art ever organised in her country. She travelled several times to Europe for her studies, but her main commitment was to make art education available to African Americans. She worked until her death as director of the art department at Cheyney State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.
