Civil rights & activism / City history
Fannie M. Richards
1840–1922 · teacher, desegregation pioneer
Detroit's first Black public school teacher, who fought school segregation, started Michigan's first kindergarten program and taught in the city for decades.
- Born
Fredericksburg, Virginia- Died
aged 81- Detroit years
- 1850s–1922
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Fannie Richards was born free in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1840, and her family moved to Detroit when she was a girl. She trained as a teacher, partly in Toronto, and in 1863 opened a private school for Black children in Detroit. Two years later the city hired her for one of its segregated colored schools, making her Detroit's first Black public school teacher. She joined the campaign against separate schools, and after the Michigan Supreme Court's 1869 ruling in the Workman case the city was forced to integrate. Richards then taught at an integrated school for more than four decades, and she is credited with creating the first kindergarten program in Michigan. Outside the classroom she founded the Phyllis Wheatley Home for aged Black women and co-founded the Michigan Association of Colored Women. She retired around 1915 and died in 1922. The Michigan Women's Hall of Fame honors her, and Detroit artist Telitha Cumi Bowens painted her portrait for a 1988–1989 exhibition at the Museum of African American History.
Highlights
- First Black teacher in Detroit's public schools (1865)
- Campaigned against segregated schools in Detroit
- Credited with Michigan's first kindergarten program
- Founded the Phyllis Wheatley Home for aged women