Samaria (Mitcham) Bailey is an African-American woman who is known as an instrumental figure in the civil rights movement. Bailey began desegregation at A. L. Miller Senior High School, an all-white female school located in Macon, Georgia. She would go on to become one of the first African American women accepted to Mercer University. She later became an accomplished pianist, and her story was adapted into a bestselling novel and a stage play. Early life The second of ten children, Samaria Mitcham was born in Macon on June 29, 1947 to a proud, hardworking family. Her father, Wilbur Mitcham, was the family breadwinner, working as a cook at a fashionable restaurant in Macon. After the children in Samaria's family were grown, Samaria's mother returned to school and graduated from Wesleyan College. She is the elder sister of “The Gay Preacher’s Wife” author Lydia Meredith. In 1964, Samaria was a junior at Appling High School, a traditionally black — and therefore coed — institution. Desegregating Miller High School Historically, white students in Macon had attended separate, gender-segregated schools. High schools for black students, on the other hand, were coeducational. As the school desegregation movement began to pick up steam, black students in the twelfth grade were placed in the traditionally white schools: Miller High School for girls and Lanier High School for boys. At Appling, the school administration considered Samaria an "academic gemstone," earning "straight-As" despite extensive extracurricular studies in (among others) chorus, band, and drama. But Samaria did not feel challenged enough, and, when students were asked to apply to enter Miller or Lanier, Samaria was among the first to volunteer. Samaria was one of the only nonwhite students at Miller High. Still, Samaria was regarded as a good and intelligent young woman, and graduated with honors. Tutoring Program Samaria also helped to develop one of the first anti-discrimination programs for her fellow students. Black students who were attempting to transfer to the ethnically white schools were required to be "academically prepared"; therefore, black students received preparatory summer tutoring. Nonetheless, eleven years of underperforming education would not be erased with a single summer of tutoring and a year of improved schooling. Black students applying to college still displayed much lower scores on standardized tests. In order to combat these disadvantages, Joseph Hendricks, then Dean of Men at Mercer University, created a secret tutoring program for black high school students, to