Abby Marlatt

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[3] – 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.[4]

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.[2]

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.[5]

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.[2]

In the summer of 1959, members of the university chapters of the YWCA and YMCA along with youth from the NAACP chapter (primarily those attending Dunbar High School[2]) started the Lexington chapter of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Julia Lewis, then a registered nurse working at Eastern State Hospital, was recruited by the president of the Lexington chapter of NAACP, Audrey Grevious, to serve as the president. Dr. Marlatt served as secretary.[2] The CORE members would send out negotiating teams of one man and one woman to talk to store managers about their policies that denied equal access to all. And they organized sit-ins at lunch counters in the variety stores in downtown Lexington with teams of at least three and up to six people who would attempt to sit and order. If they weren't served as a group, they would sit for a designated length of time - and if only the whites were served, they would try to share their food with their partners.

Betsey Brinson, oral historian: How about the university administration and your colleagues? How were they receiving you in terms of your involvement with all of this? Abby Marlatt: I felt that if my involvement were out of school hours that it was my privilege to do as I felt I needed to do. Uhmm, the people, uhmm, in this school, some of them were sympathetic to what I was doing but not sympathetic to the point that they would join me. Others were very antagonistic and felt that I was damaging the school and that they really wanted to distance themselves from me because of this. ... Dr. Dickey was the president at that point and I was called into his office one day. He said that, he thought I should be aware that my activities were impacting negatively on the finances of the university because of activities of some of the faculty and students against businesses downtown.[2]

By 1961 they had a large racially mixed dinner meeting at which James Farmer, co-founder of CORE and the organizer of the 1961 Freedom Rides, spoke. However, by 1968 the racially mixed CORE chapter ended when whites were told to leave from one the meetings.[2]

The church members who had been active in the CORE and NAACP protests organized as the Lexington Committee on Religion and Human Rights. They met at the YMCA on the corner of West Second and Jefferson Streets. Dr. Marlatt worked in this racially mixed group together with Joe Graves, Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame 2003, and Harry Sykes who in 1963 became Lexington's first Black city commissioner and in 1968 founded the Lexington Fayette County Urban League.[6]

By the 1960s she encountered problems with the school's administration and board of trustees. She was demoted from her position as dean of the College of Home Economics in 1963 by UK president Dr. Frank Graves Dickey. What specifically led to her being investigated were two major incidents:

1. publishing in the University of Kentucky's student newspaper (Kentucky Kernel) in March 1962 an open letter titled "Informed Citizenry Called the Basis of Democracy" and signed as the Dean of the School of Home Economics in which she advocated an anti-war philosophy of the conscientious objector; and,
2. standing in front of Lexington churches in the summer of 1962 to distribute handbills encouraging citizens to dissent by avoiding signing up for the draft and not paying taxes [7]

The university's board of trustees recommended that Dr. Marlatt be fired for incompetence. By that winter the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union and the University of Kentucky branch of the American Association of University Professors had taken up the case. This angered the dean of the College of Agriculture, who convinced President Dickey to remove her as director of the School of Home Economics effective September 1, 1963.[8]

A Unitarian, Marlatt was also a member of the ACLU. Because Marlatt was a tenured professor at UK, she was ultimately unable to be fired from her position as a faculty member, though in an oral interview she mentions being removed from teaching duties for a year.

In 2001, Marlatt was recognized by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.

• Congress of Racial Equality (1959–1968), organizer of Lexington chapter
• United Nations Association (1960–2010), board member of the Bluegrass chapter
• YWCA

• Kentucky Civil Liberties Union (1956–2010)
• League of Women Voters (1986–2004?); board
• Legislative Research Commission, Advisory Committee of Senior Citizens, established by the Kentucky General Assembly (1988–2004?); chair of Consumer Affairs (Health Human Services), commission chair and vice chair

• Lexington Commission on Religion and Human Rights (1960), organizer
• Community Action Council (1965–2004?), officer and board member
• Micro-City Government (1972–2001), organizer, fund raiser, secretary, treasurer, board member
• Emerson Center, Inc. Non-profit housing (1974–2004?); chair, vice chair, board member
• Bluegrass Community Services, Inc. (sponsor of nutrition projects for elderly) (1976–2004?); board member and chair
• University of Kentucky Donovan Scholars Program (1985–2004?); advisory board chair, Scholarship Committee, Dulcimer group (1989–2004?)
• Ethics Commission of Lexington Fayette Urban County Government (1995–2001); vice chair, representative of League of Women Voters
• Retired Seniors Volunteer Program (1997–2001); mentor and tutor at Harrison Elementary School