Educators from Memphis, Tennessee

Julia Britton Hooks (May 4, 1852 – March 10, 1942), known as the "Angel of Beale Street," was a musician and educator whose work with youth, the elderly, and the indigent was highly respected in her family's home state of Kentucky and in Memphis, Tennessee, where she lived with her second husband, Charles F. Hooks. She was a charter member of the Memphis branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and her example served as an inspiration for her grandson, Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992. Julia was also a leader for African-American women and active in the civil rights movement.

Mary Church Terrell (September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street school (now known as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School)—the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1896, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1894). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1910).

Shelley White-Means is an American health economist who is a Professor at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), and director of the Consortium for Health Education, Economic Empowerment and Research (CHEER) at UTHSC. She is a past president of the National Economic Association.

Edith Mansfield Fitzgerald (1877–1940) was a deaf American woman who invented a system for the deaf to learn proper placement of words in the construction of sentences. Her method, which was known as the 'Fitzgerald Key,' was used to teach those with hearing disabilities in three-quarters of the schools in the United States.

L.C. (Laurine Cecil) Anderson (June 4, 1853, in Memphis, Tennessee – January 8, 1938, in Austin, Texas) is most famous for his teachings and being a school administrator in Texas. Some of his most notable achievements were co-founding the CTSAT Colored Teachers State Association of Texas, as well as his many years spent as principal of the Prairie View Normal Institute.

Joseph Thomas Taylor (February 11, 1913 – September 23, 2000) was named dean of Indiana University at the downtown Indianapolis Campus on February 24, 1967. In 1972, he became the first dean of the newly created School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He was married to Hertha Ward-Taylor and they had three children: deceased actor Meshach Taylor, Judith F. Taylor and Hussain Taylor.

Kennedy J. Reed is an American theoretical atomic physicist in the Theory Group in the Physics & Advanced Technologies Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and a founder of the National Physical Science Consortium (NPSC), a group of about 30 universities that provides physics fellowships for women and minorities.

Cynthia Bringle (b. 1939) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and has lived and worked in Penland, North Carolina since 1970. She is a potter and teaches at the Penland School of Crafts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and John C. Campbell Folk School.

John Robert Krampf (born September 5, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee), also known as "The Happy Scientist", is a science educator known for traveling the United States with his entertaining and informative science shows for the last 25 years. A lifelong fascination with science, combined with a desire to teach has led Krampf on adventures ranging from excavating dinosaur bones in Wyoming to watching whales off the coast of Mexico.