Abby Lindsey Marlatt, Ph.D. (December 5, 1916 – March 3, 2010) was a social justice activist and a teacher scholar committed to civic engagement. While a professor at the University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington, Kentucky, she became the center of controversy at UK in the mid-1960s over anti-war protests and whether the university could censor her in her role as a public intellectual. She was honored for her work by many academic, professional and community organizations including the National Conference for Community and Justice, and she was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2001.
Early life and education
Born on December 5, 1916, and raised in Manhattan, Kansas, Abby Marlatt grew up in a family that had long roots in higher education. She was the daughter and only child of Frederick and Annie Marlatt, the granddaughter of Washington and Julia Marlatt and the niece of Abby Lillian Marlatt. Marlatt attended Kansas State College, graduating in 1938 with a bachelor's degree in home economics, specializing in dietetics and institution management. While she was in college, she became very active in the student Christian movement, serving as chairman of the college chapter of the YWCA. She recalled in an interview with Betsy Brinson that one of the highlights of her college career was a summer service project in New York City where she served as an assistant manager in the Allen Matthew House on West 11th Street, a settlement house for working-class girls where they learned to plan and cook meals together.
To qualify as a dietician she went to the University of California at Berkeley as an intern. She finished her internship earning her certificate in 1941 having taken some graduate work as well. Dr. Agnus Fay Morgan, who was head of the department, hired her as a teaching assistant so that she could work toward her Ph.D. There she worked with the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and she was trained in non-violent direct action by Bayard Rustin.
Career
Early career as university professor
While she was ABD she was hired as an assistant professor in Foods and Nutrition at Kansas State University in 1945. Only two years later, she had finished her dissertation – her research focused on nutrition and dietary habits of school children – and earned her Ph.D. in nutrition and food science in 1947.
In 1953–54 she took a sabbatical and served as a visiting professor at the Beirut College for Women, by then offering four-year degrees for women in Lebanon (and now a member college of the Lebanese American University). The school had been founded by the American Protestant Mission to help develop education in the region, and during the summer the students would serve as interns to visit local villages to teach girls and women basic literacy, mother-child healthcare and handicrafts.
While at Kansas State she served on the local board of the YWCA and with her help, students who were members of the YMCA and the YWCA planned a sit-in at lunch counters nearby campus.
Soon after earning her tenure and becoming an associate professor at Kansas State, Dr. Marlatt was hired in 1956 at the University of Kentucky's College of Agriculture to be the inaugural Director of the School of Home Economics. She was hired at a senior level with tenure in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science.
Civil rights movement in Lexington, Kentucky
Marlatt directed the School of Home Economics at the University of Kentucky for several years without incident. By 1959 she had begun to openly participate with college students and local Black civil rights organizations in peaceful protests and sit-ins in downtown Lexington to desegregate public accommodations there. Her first experience was in the late spring of 1959 when she, as a faculty sponsor for the campus chapter, worked with Charles Smith of the Lexington YWCA branch (which had an integrated coffee shop at the time) to try and bring a racially mixed group to a small restaurant at the corner of Columbia and Rose Streets, nearby campus. They were refused seating, and even after they spoke with the manager, the group of white students and local Black activists were thrown out of the eatery.