Veteran science teacher Theodora Smiley Lacey helped Teaneck, NJ, become the first city in the United States to voluntarily integrate its public schools. She was also instrumental in changing discriminatory housing practices. Born into the civil rights movement, her father was a leader in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when they called the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to be their pastor in 1954. Lacey’s mother was friends with Rosa Parks, whose refusal to sit in the back of a public bus touched off the 1955-56 Montgomery bus strike, using the church as their headquarters. Teaching in Montgomery at the time, she also worked as a driver and fundraiser for the cause. She met her husband during the boycott. They moved to New York to escape the discriminatory practices of the South, and then to Teaneck, where they found segregated schools and discrimination against Black homebuyers. Their response was to work with the Fair Housing Council of Northern New Jersey, which sent out couples posing as buyers to document owners and realtors who treated Blacks unequally, evidence that eventually became the basis for a major housing discrimination lawsuit. She continues to be active throughout Bergen County, including leading the effort to erect a life-size statue of Martin Luther King, creating an annual conference of students from Bergen County High Schools “Teens Talk About Racism” held at Fairleigh Dickinson University.