Newest FCPS middle school to be named after Mary E. Britton
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) — Fayette County’s newest middle school will be named after Mary E. Britton, a civil rights activist from Lexington.
The Mary E. Britton Middle School will hold grades 6-8 and have a capacity of 1,200 students, FCPS shared on its Facebook page Tuesday.
The school will be located at 2185 Polo Club Boulevard, in the Hamburg area of Lexington, and is slated to be completed in June 2025.
Britton, who lived from 1855 to 1925, was not only a civil rights activist but also a physician, educator, suffragist and journalist.
She was an original member of the Kentucky Negro Education Association, which formed in 1877. She was president of the Lexington Woman’s Improvement Club and later served as a charter member of the Ladies Orphan Society which founded the Colored Orphan Industrial Home in Lexington in 1892, according to the Fayette Education Foundation.
During Britton’s lifetime, she accomplished many things: teaching Black children in Lexington public schools; working as a doctor from her home in Lexington where she specialized in hydrotherapy, electrotherapy and massage; and was granted her license to practice medicine in the city in 1902, making her the first woman doctor licensed in Lexington.
