Sarah Ann Dickey

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Sarah Ann Dickey was an Ohio-born woman and ordained minister who dedicated much of her life to developing educational programs for African-Americans after the US Civil War. She founded Mount Hermon Female Seminary, one of the first colleges for African-American women.

[edit] Biography

Dickey was born in 1838 near Dayton, Ohio, and although as a woman she had received little primary education, she began studying at sixteen and received a teacher's certificate only three years later.

During the Civil War she traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to teach recently freed former slaves.

After the Civil War, she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, graduating in 1869, before returning to Mississippi to continue working with African-Americans recently freed from slavery. She organized and established the Mount Hermon Female Seminary, which opened in October 1875 in Clinton, Mississippi. The Seminary was modeled after Mount Holyoke, offering education for women, and preparing them for roles primarily as teachers. The Seminary was eventually closed in 1924 by the American Missionary Association, which had its own college in Tougaloo, Mississippi.

Dickey was ordained a minister in her church, the United Brethren Church, in 1896.

Dickey raised several children, while never marrying.

Sarah Ann Dickey died Jan. 23, 1904.