About Our Honoree

Mary E Demps was born in Quitman, Georgia, the youngest girl of a family of six children. She had a love for education her entire young life and moved to New Your City in the late 1960s to pursue post-secondary education in New York City. Ms. Demps obtained a Bachelors's and Master's degree in Reading and Education with a minor in Spanish from City College of New York. Mary Demps spoke fluent Spanish and spent the next 30 years teaching students with special needs of all ages and backgrounds within the New York City and Miami Dade County school systems. Ms. Demps was very passionate about education and worked hard to ensure that her students received the best education possible many times by using her own funds to provide them with the tools that they needed. Mary Demps was instrumental in several family members attending and graduating from Fisk University and other historical HBCU throughout the United States. In 2020, we established the Mary E Demps Educational Scholarship Fund which is a 501(c) non-profit organization designed to assist college students with funds for books and educational supplies as they pursue their college education. We are proud to be able to continue to touch lives just as Ms. Demps did her entire adult life.