A fact from Theodora Lacey appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 March 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that civil rights activist Theodora Lacey helped lead the campaign which, in 1964, resulted in Teaneck, New Jersey, becoming the first town in the United States to vote for school integration?
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"Archie Lacey, a Ph.D. in science, went to Montgomery around 1953 on a fellowship. King was to marry the couple, in fact, but he got called away to New York on business. He baptized two of the couple's four children."
Kinney, Jackie (June 5, 1985). "Oral History of Teaneck". Teaneck Public Library. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
Look for info on Montgomery Bus Protest and League of Women Voters: Oh yes. I think our history, my husband often says that he married me out of protest. He really, I don't think, actually means that. He should be saying that he married me during the protest which was the Montgomery Bus Protest. In fact, all of our early courtship days, were working and marching with Martin Luther King so that we had been involved quite a bit and so it was quite natural that I was willing to go with Selma to work with the League of Women Voters.
(T) Well really the north east NECO really got started in our basement and what had happened up to this time, after we became very involved in attending board meetings and council meetings and often, after these meetings, we would invite people over for a nightcap or something because we had small children and often and babysitting difficulty so we had to get home and it is convenient to have people drop over to discuss what had happened at these meetings. And it was as a result of these really just what initially started out as social sessions evaluating the meetings that we had attended that NECO began to develop.
Awarded prize for excellence in secondary school teaching at Commencement ceremony
"Middle school science teacher Lacey came to Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Teaneck in 1969. A graduate of Alabama State College, she taught science in Alabama and Louisiana before moving to New Jersey, where she taught at Jersey City College for two years before returning to Louisiana with the National Science Foundation. As a young teacher she worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and has been active in civil rights and community service throughout her career. She earned her MA at Hunter College in 1965 and has taken graduate courses at Rutgers and Howard universities."
"Lacey's service to the community is extensive and varied. She was chosen to be a delegate representing New Jersey in a Citizen to Citizen Exchange Program trip to Russia, and was co-founder of Teens Talk About Racism, an annual diversity conference for high school students throughout Bergen County. She is a former president of both Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. of Bergen County and the Bergen County Links, and was recently appointed by Governor Christie to serve on the Martin Luther King, Jr. State Commission. Lacey presently serves on the Teaneck Film Festival, the Teaneck Township Historical Preservation Board. She is Vice Chair of the African American Advisory Board for Bergen County, Chair of the Bergen County Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Observance Committee, and co-chair of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument Committee which is overseeing the erection of a larger than life-size bronze statue of Dr. Martin Luther, Jr. on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack, New Jersey which will be unveiled in October, 2014."
"Lacey is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Master Teacher Award from the Teacher Training Institute of New York, Teacher of the Year from the Teaneck School District, Outstanding Women of New Jersey from the New Jersey Senate, and Most Outstanding New Jersey Secondary School Teacher from Princeton University. She was cited in the Bergen Record in their "Most Intriguing People" and Signature series. Lacey is a member of the Central Unitarian Church, Paramus, New Jersey. "
Theodora Lacey was new to Teaneck from Montgomery, Alabama, when she and her husband joined the integration battle. She warned the audience to not rest on its laurels.
“Some of us have become quite complacent,” she cautioned. “We believe that the battle is won, that the path is open, and it was all done, and that we don’t even need to think about it. Tonight let us commit or recommit, re-energize our fight for what is right, for what is fair and what is just.”
Lacey advocated in favor of a jobs program akin to the WPA
"Usually I like to say ‘I’m happy to be here.’ I’m not happy to be here," said Theodora Lacey, an organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. "But I’m glad we can be together."
Lacey, who was 21 when she helped organize the boycott, said injustices facing blacks and minorities are not as overt as in 1955, but are more dire.
"It won’t be sitting in the back of the bus," she said. "It will be hunger."
When she moved to NJ, MLK teased them about "abandoning him in the south"
"The Laceys were involved in fair housing and integration of the school systems in Bergen County. Lacey was a teacher in Teaneck for 39 years before she retired in June 2007. "
"After King’s assassination, Lacey began to celebrate his life by holding vigils and working to have his birthday recognized as a national holiday."
"She also serves on a committee that holds a celebration on King’s birthday to honor high school students who are doing well in school and who perform community service."
1998: winner of Winifred Latimer Norman Award—Established to honor a past UUA District Trustee, the award is presented to the individual in the District, who best represents the ideals and values exemplified by her in the areas of social action and racial concerns.
Led Bergen County nonprofit that selected statue of MLK
Lacey's father was "president of the board of directors of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church when King was chosen as pastor of the Montgomery, Ala., church in 1954."
"Lacey, now 84, grew up in Montgomery, AL under Jim Crow laws and, during Wednesday’s program in North Plainfield, spoke at length about her experiences during the historical Montgomery Bus Boycott. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks in Dec. 1955, the boycott was a 13-month political and social protest campaign against racial segregation on the town’s public transit system that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. Additionally, Lacey’s family and Parks were good friends and her late father, while serving as president of the board of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was part of a committee that recruited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to serve as pastor."
"settling first in New York and then in Teaneck, NJ, joined the League of Women Voters and the PTA. She got a job as a science teacher for Teaneck Public Schools and in the early 1960s was instrumental in spearheading the integration of Teaneck Public Schools. As a result of her efforts, the district, in 1964, became the first in the nation to integrate without a court order."
Retired in 2007
"???". The World: Journal of the Unitarian Universalist Association. 1987. p. 31.
fragment: "...In 1986, CUC member Theodora Lacey was one of 15 NJ residents to visit the USSR as part of the same exchange program."
Theodora Lacey, a trustee of the Bergen County branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said she would have preferred if students had been taught last Friday about Dr. King and given Monday off to perform community service like work with homeless people. Still, she said, staying open to teach about Dr. King is better than having students spend the day shopping.
"'When you siphon off a large section of the population, including many top students, the community loses interest in the schools and that can lead to a downward trend,' said Theodora Lacey, a black science teacher at Thomas Jefferson Middle School and a veteran of the 1965 struggle to integrate the schools."
"This really opened the eyes of people," said Theodora Lacey, a civil rights leader and retired teacher. "There were these sweet young people who had grown up in an integrated setting. So it was just seemingly contrary to what we thought we were teaching and bringing about through integration — that you could have a young, white cop shoot and kill."
Levin, Jay (February 10, 2008). "A living link to King, Parks". The Record. Bergen County, New Jersey. Retrieved March 4, 2017.
Lacey's father was board chairman of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; helped bring MLK to Montgomery
Rosa Parks was a childhood friend of her mother
Archie was professor at New York's Hunter College
"for more than two decades, she has quietly led Bergen County's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Observance Committee."
Lacey's parents were educators
born: Theodora Smiley
met Archie during the boycott
Acted as "gofer" for boycott
"She attended meetings. She typed press releases. She gave rides to working people without cars."
"Theodora Lacey would be compelled to invoke King's powerful words in another place and time. On April 10, 1990, one of her former students, a black teenager named Phillip Pannell, was fatally shot by Teaneck police. The white cop who pulled the trigger, Gary Spath, had been a classmate of one of Lacey's sons. Spath was acquitted of manslaughter two years later."
"Science teacher. Born– Jan. 21, 1923, Boothton, Ala. Parents– Joseph Clifton and Mary Belle (Tarrant) Lacey. Married– Theodora Smiley, Apr. 29, 1956. Children– Four. Education– Alabama State College, B.S., 1947; graduate study, Howard University, 1948-1949; Northwestern University, M.A., 1953, Ph.D., 1955. Taught science on high school and junior college levels in Alabama, 1947-1952; University instructor at Grambling College, 1955-1960; Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1960-1968; Herbert H. Lehman College, 1968-. Member– National Science Teachers Association, director, Region IV, 1958-1960; National Association for Research in Science Teaching; American Association for the Advancement of Science; National Institute of Science; New York Academy of Science; Phi Delta Kappa; Beta Kappa Chi."
