Nelle A. Coley
# Nelle A. Coley

Nelle Artis Coley, a noted educator, was born in Greensboro, NC in 1909. She attended local parochial primary schools (Episcopal and Lutheran) in Greensboro before starting public school. She entered Bennett College in 1926, completing her high school studies in 1927. For the next four years, she alternated her studies with summer employment as a waitress in restaurants on the New Jersey shore. She completed her undergraduate studies at Bennett College in 1931. Unable to find work in Greensboro, she moved to Beaufort, North Carolina, where she found a teaching job.

Mrs. Coley continued teaching in Beaufort through the early 1930s, and spent her summers in New York, pursuing graduate studies at Temple University and Columbia University. She completed her graduate studies at Columbia in 1935. In the fall of 1935, she returned to Greensboro and started teaching at James B. Dudley High School. Coley sought to make her students question bias and think critically about society. During her career, she was a member of the Greensboro Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, American Association of University Women, the Bennett College Alumnae Association, NAACP, and the National Council of Negro Women. She served as president of the Classroom Teachers Association of the Greensboro Unit and the State Unit of the North Carolina Teachers Association, predecessor to the North Carolina Association of Educators.

Coley and other teachers were mentioned as inspirations and role models to the Greensboro Four and the Greensboro sit-ins.

She taught English courses at Dudley until her retirement in 1980. Mrs. Coley died on April 14, 1999, after a brief illness.

