¡PARA ÑPAR@ ` ¥TEXT ` ÅLaney, Lucy Craft1854╨1933educatorBorn in Macon, Georgia, on April 13, 1854, Lucy Laney was the daughter of free black parents. She attended the private Lewis High School (later Ballard Normal School) in Macon and in 1873 graduated from Atlanta University. For twelve years she taught in public schools in Macon, Milledgeville, Augusta, and Savannah, Georgia. In January 1886, with a state charter and encouragement from the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen, she opened a private school in an Augusta church. Within two years the enrollment of the school increased from 5 to 234, and it continued to grow through providing a solid academic education to students whose other options were limited to vocational training or the few poor public schools for African-Americans. Finances were a perennial problem. The church provided no support, and Lucy Laney was obliged to spend much time seeking out individual benefactors. A large gift early in the school╒s history from Francina E. H. Haines led to the school╒s being named the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, and other gifts over the years made possible the erection of several brick buildings on a four-acre campus. The school was able to attract outstanding students and teachers; among the latter, in 1896╨1897, was Mary McLeod Bethune. By 1917 the school had a faculty of more than 30 and a student body of some 900. It pioneered in kindergarten education in Augusta and opened in the 1890s a nurses╒ training department that became eventually the school of nursing at University Hospital. In its later years the lower grades were dropped, and Haines Institute provided a four-year high school course and a year of college-level instruction. An austere, strict, and widely admired educator, Lucy Laney continued to direct the activities of the school until her death in Augusta, Georgia, on October 23, 1933. Haines Institute closed in 1949. ╓styl `
