Lucy Craft Laney, educator, school founder, and civil rights activist, was born on April 13, 1854 in Macon, Georgia to free parents Louisa and David Laney. David Laney, a Presbyterian minister and skilled carpenter, had purchased his freedom approximately twenty years before Lucy Laney’s birth. He purchased Louisa’s freedom shortly after they were married. Lucy Laney learned to read and write by the age of four and by the time she was twelve, she was able to translate difficult passages in Latin including Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Laney attended Lewis (later Ballard) High School in Macon, Georgia and in 1869, at the age of fifteen; she joined Atlanta University’s first class. Four years later she graduated from the teacher’s training program at the University. After teaching for ten years in Macon, Savannah, Milledgeville, and Augusta, she in 1883 opened her own school in the basement of Christ Presbyterian Church in...