Lucy Craft Laney was born to a presbyterian minister and his young wife in April of 1854. She was the seventh of ten children, though not all the children survived to adulthood. She was educated at one of the Freedman’s School’s that the American Missionary Association set up across the South, and from a young age, felt called to become a teacher.

Lucy worked in education for a decade before the Board of Missions for Freeman convinced her to start her own school in Augusta, Georgia. A lot of Lucy’s work as the head of school involved fundraising and the benevolence of others. Once her student body outgrew Christ Presbyterian Church, a white undertaker offered his two-story house on Calhoun Street. Lucy knew that her school would soon test the limits of the Calhoun Street building, so in 1896, she went to the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis to solicit funding.

Mrs. F.E.H. Haines, president of the Women’s Department in the Presbyterian Church USA, became Lucy’s most generous benefactor; thus, the name of Lucy’s school, Haines Normal and Industrial Institute.

Lucy helmed the school through hell and high water—literally, in the case of the latter. Once, a flood cut the school off from the rest of the world for three days. Haines also suffered a malaria outbreak, as well as a fire.

Lucy devoted her life to her school until her death in 1933. Her funeral was described as a “coronation” with an estimated five thousand people in attendance.