Many distinguished educators, both black and white, made important contributions to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s. One such educator was Fannie Smith Motley. Fannie Ernestine Smith was born in 1927 in Perdue Hill, Alabama, a small town near Monroeville. As a young woman, she attended all-black Selma Baptist University from 1944-1946, where she met her future husband, D.L. Motley, a ministerial student. Fannie disrupted her education in 1949 when the couple married and had two children. Shortly after the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, Fannie overcame her strong fear of reprisals from the Ku Klux Klan and enrolled in previously all-white Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. She graduated from Spring Hill with honors in 1956, the first African American to do so. This was her contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. Fannie first taught second grade at A.F. Owens School in Mobile, Alabama, but then relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1963 when her husband was given a job as the pastor of Peace Baptist Church there. In the Cincinnati public school system Fannie taught for twenty-four years, returning to school to complete the requirements for her master’s degree in guidance education from Xavier University in 1969.

Fannie’s alma mater, Spring Hill College, established a scholarship in her name to be awarded to an individual who advances diversity on campus. On May 9, 2004, Spring Hill conferred an honorary doctorate on Fannie Smith Motley in recognition of her efforts to promote diversity. She is truly a chalkboard champion.

Ethel Cuff Black was born in 1890 in Wilmington, Delaware. Her father was a prominent banker, and her maternal grandfather was a Civil War Veteran.

As a youngster, Ethel attended Industrial School for colored Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey, and graduated with the highest grade point average in her class. She graduated cum laude with a major in education from Howard University in 1915, where she is credited with being one of the founding members of the prestigious Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

After her college graduation, Ethel became the first African American teacher in Rochester, New York. She also taught in Oklahoma and Missouri, and worked at PS 108 in South Ozone Park, New York, where she taught for 27 years before her retirement in 1957. This chalkboard champion passed away on September 22, 1977.

Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875, the last of seventeen children born to former slaves in a log cabin on a plantation in Marysville, South Carolina. She was the only one of the McLeod children to be born into freedom.

As a young child, Mary showed an unusual interest in books and reading, but in those days it was, unfortunately, not the custom to educate African Americans. Nevertheless, a charitable organization interested in providing educational opportunities for children established a school near Mary’s home. Her parents could scrape together only enough money to pay the tuition for one of their children, and Mary was chosen.

When she grew up, Mary retained her strong desire to extend educational opportunities to other African Americans. In 1904 she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. This school is now known as Bethune Cookman University.

In her later years, Mary became a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and also a trusted advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed her the head of the National Youth Administration in 1936. In 1945, she was appointed by President Harry Truman to be the only woman of color present at the founding meeting of the United Nations. This celebrated educator passed away peacefully in 1955.

For all her accomplishments, Mary McLeod Bethune is truly a chalkboard champion.