Alice Emma Nugent (1876-1971)

Teacher, Musician, Church Worker

Alice Nugent, daughter of George and Anna Foster Nugent, graduated Central High School in 1894, the speaker at her commencement in the Masonic Temple Theatre. She attended a variety of post-secondary institutions: Louisville Municipal College; Northwestern School of Music; Bouregard College of Music, where she studied piano; Hampton Institute; and Indiana University. She graduated from Simmons University with an A.B. in 1930, and from Kentucky State, also with an A.B. in 1936. Alice Nugent taught in the Louisville colored schools, primarily at Paul Dunbar High School. Although she applied to become principal and served more than once as interim principal, she never achieved that goal. She retired in 1946. A scholarship in her name, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Louisville Alumni Chapter Alice Nugent Scholarship, continues to be awarded.

Alice Nugent was active in many church and civic organizations, choosing to take a less visible role than her sister Georgia. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the Georgia Nugent Improvement Club. A long-time member of the Kentucky Association of Colored Women, she wrote the group’s official song. She often took charge of music programs at meetings and conventions and organized programs for children. She took charge of children’s programming when the National Association of Colored Women held its convention in Louisville in 1910. 

The Nugent home became a welcoming station for important figures visiting the city. Alice Nugent had been instrumental in the family’s hosting of out-of-town guests and continued that role after the death of her sisters.  When Mary McLeod Bethune visited Louisville in 1941 as director of the National Youth Administration, a New Deal program, she was Alice’s guest at the Nugent Sixth Street home.

Alice Nugent died in 1971 at age 98, the last surviving member of the Nugent family.

Sources

Alice Nugent Personnel File, Jefferson County Public Schools Archives.

American Baptist: 8 January 1904.

Davis, Elizabeth Lindsay.  Lifting as They Climb. New York: G. K. Hall & Co. 1996 (1933).

Louisville Courier Journal; 18 and 19 June 1894; 22 June 1897; 1 December 1971; 13 June 1990.

Louisville Leader: 28 January 1922; 20 May 1922; 24 March 1923; 27 June 1931; 3 March 1934; 13 October 1934; 24 November 1934; 4 January 1941; 14 June 1941; 18 January 1947; 26 April 1947; 25 March 1950.

Smith, Gerald L., Karen Cotton McDaniel, and John A. Hardin, eds. The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 387.

U. S. Census: 1870-1880; 1900-1940.

Williams, Lillian Serece, ed. Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 1895-1992. Bethesda, MD. University Publications of America, 1995. Part 1, Reel 1: frame 00356.