Frank L. Stanley

Frank L. Stanley Sr. (1906 – October 19, 1974) Stanley was general president of Alpha Phi Alpha and a civil rights activist. He drafted the resolution that led to desegregation of higher education in Kentucky, and chaired desegregation committees for the U.S. Secretary of War. Stanley was selected twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize Award committee.

Biography Early life and education Stanley was born in 1906, in Chicago, Illinois to Helen Stanley from Louisville, Kentucky and his father from Cicero, Illinois, then moved with his mother back to her hometown. Mrs. Stanley was in the restaurant business and ran the Allen Hotel at 26th and Madison Streets. by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder of The Chicago Defender, the highest-circulation black-owned newspaper in the country. Abbott had recruited local editorial staff to develop The Louisville Defender that was owned by Abbott and printed in Chicago, but covered Louisville from a Black perspective. His column, "People, Places and Problems" was nationally syndicated. In 1950, the city's major newspaper, The Courier-Journal, wrote,“Much of the credit for the even and amiable pace Kentucky has maintained in its working out of race relations problems must be given the Defender.” Kentucky Governor Bert Combs commissioned Stanley to explore the establishment of a human rights commission for the commonwealth,

Posthumous honors

Stanley was inducted into the University of Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1983, as well as into the inaugural class of the Kentucky Human Rights Commission Hall of Fame in 2000. The Frank L. Stanley Papers are at the University of Louisville Libraries' Special Collections and Archives.