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Fannie Richards was born in Fredericksburg, but she worked to integrate schools in Detroit almost a century before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Richards was born on Sophia Street in 1840 and was educated in secret, because it was against the law to teach even free blacks. She moved to Detroit as a young girl and attended schools there and in Canada.
When she was assigned to teach at Colored School No. 2 in 1865, she and a school board member challenged the racial segregation. She and John J. Bagley, who later became governor of Michigan, built their case on the newly ratified 14th Amendment, which stated that all persons should be treated equally under the law.
The Michigan Supreme Court agreed, in 1869. Two years later, Richards became the first black educator in Detroit’s integrated schools. She taught for the next 44 years and was the first to implement the new concept of kindergarten in public schools.
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Sources: "A Different Story" by Ruth Coder Fitzgerald; HistoryPoint.org of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library; The Free Lance-Star archives; State of Michigan Web site; African Within; The Kennedy Center; We Were Always Free By T.O. Madden Jr.; The Richmond Times-Dispatch; Life Magazine; Westmoreland County, Virginia.
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by clicking on the names below. |
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• Gabriel Prosser, inspired by the Bible |
• John J. Wright devoted leader, reader |
• Urbane Bass, city doctor |
• Sadie Combs, first teacher at Snell
• Philip Wyatt,
• Palmer Hayden,
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• Venus Jones, First black graduate of MWC |
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petitioning for change |
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