Theodora Lacey

Theodora Smiley Lacey (born 1932) is an American civil rights activist and educator. She helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott, fought for voting rights and fair housing, and helped lead the effort to integrate schools in New Jersey.

Early life Lacey was born Theodora Smiley in 1932 in Montgomery, Alabama, and her parents were both educators. At that time, Alabama was highly segregated, Jim Crow laws were in force, and Montgomery became a center of the Civil Rights Movement. Lacey's family was deeply involved in the movement: her mother was a childhood friend of Rosa Parks, and her father, a high-school principal, was president of the board of directors of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1954 when the church chose their new pastor, Martin Luther King Jr.

Lacey graduated from Alabama State College and worked as a science teacher in Alabama, Louisiana, and later New Jersey. Initially planned for just one day, the boycott lasted 381 days and ended only when the laws requiring segregated buses were struck down as unconstitutional.

Lacey, who was teaching science at George Washington Carver High School by then, was very active in the boycott, working, she says, as a "gofer." In addition to driving them herself, Lacey was an enthusiastic fundraiser for taxi drivers who supported the boycott by offering free or discounted rides to these boycott participants. Archie was a science professor at Alabama State College and met Theodora through his involvement in the bus boycott. Dr. King had planned to officiate at the wedding, but was called away to New York on business; he did later baptize two of their four children.

Relocation to New Jersey In the late 1950s, the family, with their three-year-old son, Archie Jr., relocated north from Louisiana, where she had been teaching, to escape the racism and segregation of the South. Though they had left Jim Crow laws behind in the South, they still experienced racism. Some neighbors moved out and some did not want black children in their school; a next door neighbor sat in his yard with a shotgun while their children played outside. With that decision, Teaneck became the first town in the United States to integrate its schools through a vote.

Education career, community leadership and family Lacey completed her MA at Hunter College in New York City in 1965, and was a teacher for 42 years until her retirement in 2007.

In 2003, Lacey co-founded Teens Talk About Racism (TTAR), an annual diversity conference for high school students throughout Bergen County. TTAR brings youth leaders together to collaborate and lead school diversity work. Through activities that foster empathy and dialogue, students learn to recognize thought patterns that may be barriers to respectful communication. Moving from a place of deeper understanding, students return to their campuses to create action plans for a more inclusive school culture.

Lacey was selected as a delegate to represent New Jersey in the Citizen to Citizen Exchange Program trip to Russia.

Theodora Smiley Lacey School in Teaneck, New Jersey, of Teaneck Public Schools, opened in 2020. The stretch of Teaneck's Broad Street on which the school sits is also named for her.