“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history,” said Dr. Carter G. Woodson, historian and champion for the celebration of Black History Month

More than 50 years before Dr. Woodson organized Negro History Week in 1926 to bring national attention to the contributions of Black people throughout America, Fannie Richards (1840–1922) was already a revolutionary history maker, in 1871 becoming the first Black teacher in Detroit’s newly integrated school system.

It was only fitting that Richards would get the assignment, given that she had been a catalyst behind the lawsuit, Joseph Workman v The Board of Education of Detroit, which abolished segregated public schools in Detroit nearly 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education.

Born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Richards’ family moved to Detroit during the 1850s where she received her early education in public schools. She later taught Sunday school at the historic Second Baptist Church, which was also a driving force behind the Workman lawsuit.

In 1872, Richards was selected as the first teacher to implement the then innovative concept of kindergarten in Detroit public schools. The experiment at Everett Elementary School was deemed a success by administrators, with a recommendation that kindergarten be a permanent part of the curriculum for all city schools. Richards would continue teaching at Everett until retiring in 1915.

An activist on behalf of African American people throughout her life, Richards had a love for children that knew no boundaries, as she shared in an interview upon her retirement.

“I loved my boys and girls — Negro, Jew and German — as they came to me in the many changes that 44 years in one district will bring. The mixture was interesting to watch in the classroom, for while the Jewish children led in arithmetic, and the German children were the best thinkers, the colored children were the best readers, almost orators, I might say. The colored boys and girls had the feeling and voices for expressive reading and no one takes keener pleasure in the progress that Negroes have made in an educational way in Detroit than I have.”