Author: Mildred Moody Eakin
Born: 1890
Died: 1986
Dates: December 2009
Bio: Mildred Olivia Moody Eakin was born and raised in Wilson, New York.  In 1910, after graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in English and History, she began teaching school in Wilson, New York.  In 1916, she left teaching to become assistant national secretary at the Women's Christian Temperance Union.  In 1919 she moved to Kansas City to work with the Methodist Episcopal Church's agency for children's education.  In 1921, she moved to Chicago to become superintendent of the church's Sunday School Board's Department of Children's Work.  Her first book, Tales of Golden Deeds, was published in 1923.  She wrote two more books herself, Kindergarten Course for a Vacation Church School (1925) and Teaching Junior Boys and Girls (1934).

In 1931, she married Frank Eakin, a Biblical scholar.  In 1932, when her husband got a job with Macmillan Publishing Company in New York, the couple moved to Millburn, New Jersey, and she began teaching religious education at the Drew Theology Center of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.  In 1934, she received a Master's degree from New York University.  Together with her husband, she wrote eleven more books, all of them relating to teaching children, and most of them urging teachers to guard against the formation of racism and anti-Semitism in their young students.  In 1948, she was appointed an assistant professor at Drew University.

In 1954, she retired from teaching and moved with her husband to Lakeland, Florida.  Throughout her career she had been a pioneer in multi-culturalism at a time when anti-Semitism and racism were acceptable values in mainstream society and her belief in progressive education frequently brought her under fire in her position.