Cuthbert was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her bachelor's degree from Boston University in 1920. She subsequently became principal of Burrel Normal School, then Dean of Women at Talladega College. In 1933, she delivered an address at the NAACP national convention entitled "Honesty in Race Relations."Lauren Kientz Anderson, "A Nauseating Sentiment, a Magical Device, or a Real Insight? Interracialism at Fisk University in 1930" in Marybeth Gasman and Roger L. Geiger (eds), Higher Education for African Americans Before the Civil Rights Era, 1900-1964, 75-111. Perspectives on the History of Higher Education. Vol. 29. 2012. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012. Cuthbert later received her master's degree and Doctorate from Columbia University. Her dissertation, titled "Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro College Graduate," was a sociological study of the effects of education on the lives of African-American women. She published a volume of poetry, as well as essays in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life.Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900–1950. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996.
