domestics, Sallie Wyatt and her mother supported themselves, Sallie's invalid father, and Sallie's seven younger siblings. Wyatt, who grew up in poverty in Evansville's black community, continued to work as a domestic while attending the city's public schools. In 1897, at the age of sixteen, she graduated from Governor High School in Evansville as valedictorian of her eleven-member class. Wyatt also worked while pursuing additional studies to become a teacher. She attended Evansville Norman School, a two-year teacher training school, and continued her education with summer courses at the University of Chicago from 1909 until 1911 and in 1927, 1929, and 1930. She also took classes during the fall semesters at Indiana University-Evansville from 1930 to 1935. Marriage and family On November 30, 1911, Sallie Wyatt married Logan Henry Stewart, a real estate agent based in Evansville. The couple had no children. Over the years, the Stewarts continued to develop their real estate business, which Sallie continued to manage after her husband's death. Career Educator After earning a teaching certificate, Stewart began a fifty-year career as a teacher in the Evansville public schools at the first grade through high school levels for most of her adult life. From 1924 to 1928, she was dean of girls at Evansville's Douglass High School and from 1928 to 1951 as dean of girls at the city's Lincoln High School. At Lincoln, she also introduced classes in domestic science, stenography, and mental hygiene. Civic activist As Stewart worked to elevate herself from the poverty of her youth, she became more involved in efforts to improve the lives of other members of Evansville's the black community. Stewart, a member of Grace Lutheran Church in Evansville, joined the Elizabeth Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. By 1912 she had begun to devote more of her energy to black social service work in Evansville. Stewart became a charter member of the Evansville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People around 1915 and served as the local chapter's first secretary. A year later, Stewart and a group of black women founded the Day Nursery Association for Colored Children in Evansville, which opened in early 1919. The women raised about $2,000 for a down payment to purchase a nine-room home where a daily average of 29 children of all ages were cared for, some of them overnight, so that their mothers could work.