Muriel S. Snowden

Snowden was born Muriel Sophronia Sutherland and raised in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Through her father, she was descended from the 19th century freedman Scipio Vaughan, whose descendants on three continents would go on to become one of the world's most illustrious Black families by the early 21st century.

Snowden graduated as valedictorian of her high school in 1934. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1938.

She then worked as a volunteer for a settlement house in Newark and an investigator for the Essex County Welfare Board. She also studied at the New York School of Social Work from 1943 to 1945 and funded her education with a fellowship from the National Urban League. She married Otto P. Snowden in 1944, and they moved to Boston. Gail Snowden, their only child, was born in 1945.

Snowden served as executive director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee from 1948 to 1950, until she left to dedicate her full-time to Freedom House. She also taught community organization at the Simmons College School of Social Work as an adjunct instructor from 1958 to 1970. Snowden served on the boards of many organizations, including University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Associated Harvard Alumni, the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association, Babson College, Shawmut Bank, the board of overseers of Harvard College, and the Racial Imbalance Committee of the Massachusetts Department of Education.