Fannie E. Motley
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Mrs. Fannie Ernestine Motley was raised in Monroeville, Alabama. Years before George Wallace attempted to block integration of the University of Alabama, Motley was ready to become the first black student to graduate from Spring Hill College, the white Jesuit university in Mobile, Alabama. She was the devoted wife of a prominent local Pastor D.L Motley Senior and had two sons who are currently pastors in Jeffersonville, Indiana and Atlanta, Georgia repectively. She had enrolled in college shortly after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Mrs. Fannie Ernestine Motley was the first African American to graduate from the white Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama in 1956. This historical moment was documented in the New York Times, Jet Magazine and Time Magazine. Motley came to Cincinnati in 1963 when her husband was installed as pastor of Peace Baptist Church. She taught for 24 years in the Cincinnati Public School system. In 1969 she earned a master’s degree in guidance counseling from Xavier. When her husband died in 2001 she moved to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to be near her son Rev D.L Motley Jr (pastor of Gilte Edge Baptist Church). Mrs. Motley is also the sister of a well known Birmingham minister and civil rights activist Rev. Nelson "Fireball" Smith and has graced the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. In her livingroom there sits a chair with a sign on it that says, "Martin Luther King Jr. sat in this chair at our house, October 10, 1964." She now lives with her son Rev. D.L Motley Jr in Jeffersonville, Indiana. A scholarship has been created in her name at Spring Hill College. She still is a living figure of African American History.
