Theodora Lacey

Lacey was born Theodora Smiley in 1932 in Montgomery, Alabama, and her parents were both educators.[3] At that time, Alabama was highly segregated, Jim Crow laws were in force, and Montgomery became a center of the Civil Rights Movement.[4] 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.[5]

Lacey graduated from Alabama State College and worked as a science teacher in Alabama, Louisiana, and later New Jersey.[1]

Lacey's first direct involvement as a civil rights activist began in 1955 when her mother's friend, Rosa Parks, was arrested for sitting in the "white" section of a public bus. Montgomery's public transportation system had always been segregated, and other men, women and children had been arrested for similar offenses, but Parks' arrest triggered protests and calls for a boycott of the bus system. Church member and WPC president Jo Ann Robinson and pastor Dr. King emerged as leaders of the boycott movement and the Dexter Avenue Church became their de facto headquarters.[6][7] 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.[8]

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."[3] She attended meetings and typed press releases for the movement.[3] Many of the participants in the boycott were domestic workers who didn't own cars and relied on the bus system for their jobs.[9] 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.[3][9] She sent letters all over the country seeking donations to help with maintenance of the taxis.[9]

It was during the boycott that she met her future husband, Archie Lacey.[10] Archie was a science professor at Alabama State College and met Theodora through his involvement in the bus boycott.[6] The couple's courtship was brief, and they married on April 29, 1956, in the midst of the boycott.[11] 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.[9]

Once the boycott ended, the Laceys' civil rights activism continued. In the summer of 1957, she and her husband traveled throughout Alabama researching voter registration and injustice in the political system. Their research was used to support litigation against disenfranchisement of black voters in the state.[12]

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.[13] After a few years in Manhattan near Hunter College, where her husband was a professor, they moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, in 1961.[13] 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.[13]

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.[13]

She is the co-chair of the county African-American Advisory Committee and the Bergen County Martin Luther King Jr. Monument Committee, which was established in 2010 to raise money and erect a life-size bronze sculpture of King in the county. In 2014 the governor appointed her to New Jersey's Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.[16]

In 2003, Lacey co-founded Teens Talk About Racism (TTAR),[17] an annual diversity conference for high schools students throughout Bergen County.[18] 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.[8]

In 2011 she joined the People's Organization for Progress in calling on congress to institute a jobs program modeled on the Works Progress Administration. The campaign called for 381 days of protest, reflecting the length of the Montgomery bus boycott sixty years earlier.[8]

She has four children, and, as of 2012, ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.[13] Her husband, Dr. Archie Lacey, died in 1986.[9]

Theodora Lacey is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Master Teacher Award from the Teacher Training Institute, Teacher of the Year Award from Teaneck, Outstanding Educator award from the Teaneck Chamber of Commerce, Outstanding Women of New Jersey from the New Jersey Senate, and Most Outstanding Secondary School Teacher from Princeton University. In addition, she was honored by the Bergen Record as one of the "Most Intriguing People", listed in Who's Who America's Teachers and is the recipient of several awards from local diversity organizations, including the Sojourner Truth Award, the Negro Business and Professional Women of Bergen County, Lifetime Achievement Award Bergen County Urban League, Omega Psi Phi fraternity Community Service Award, Matthew Feldman Community Service Award, and the NAACP Service Award and the Trailblazer Award from Councilwoman Lizette Parker.

The Bergen County YWCA Theodora Lacey Racial Justice Award is as annual award given in her name to individuals or groups who recognized for lifelong commitment and work toward the elimination of racism.[19]

Theodora Smiley Lacey School in Teaneck, New Jersey, of Teaneck Public Schools, opened in 2020.[20] The stretch of Teaneck's Broad Street on which the school sits is also named for her.[21]