Fannie Smith Motley: A Chalkboard Champion of the Civil Rights Movement

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.