Dr. Gloria Jean Wade-Gayles dedicated her life to fighting for the rights and enlightenment of others. The author, award-winning educator and a trailblazer in social justice, women’s rights and activism, who died Jan. 27, 2026, in Atlanta at age 88, leaves a legacy of shaping the minds and hearts of generations of women and men.
Wade-Gayles will be remembered for her visionary leadership, passion for scholarship, and her unrelenting fight for freedom and justice, which began in Memphis at LeMoyne-Owen College and continued on through the hallowed halls of several HBCUs all around the country.
A life-long proponent of education, Wade-Gayles was born in Memphis in 1937 and enrolled at LeMoyne-Owen College in 1955, the only college Blacks could attend in Memphis at that time. She demonstrated leadership abilities at the college, serving as president of the school’s chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and secretary of the Student Council. She was named Ms. LeMoyne-Owen in 1958 and graduated cum laude in 1959, with a bachelor of arts in English. That was just the beginning for Wade-Gayles.
In a statement on Facebook, LeMoyne Owen shared that Wade-Gayles was “A Civil Rights activist who planned demonstrations and registered voters, (and) embodied the inseparable bond between scholarship and justice … Her choice to dedicate her life to HBCUs was a gift to generations of students. LeMoyne-Owen College is forever honored to have been the foundation of her remarkable journey.”
The educator turned activist earned a master of arts from Boston University and joined the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), an organization founded in 1942 and rooted in non-violent action. CORE was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s and Wade-Gayles was said to have been arrested several times due to her participation in peaceful protests.
Wade-Gayles’ work would later take her to Atlanta in 1963 to teach at Spelman College, although she was accused of being too radical and her level and style of activism wasn’t welcome at the time. She returned home to Memphis and taught during the “Freedom Summer” voter registration drives before moving to Washington, D.C. to teach at Howard University. In Chocolate City, she met her late husband, Joseph Nathan Gayles. The pair soon moved back to Atlanta to raise their children, and Wade-Gayles continued her educational pursuit by earning a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University in 1981.
Talladega College welcomed Wade-Gayles with open arms, as did other HBCUs. However, the prestige of a top-rated HBCU would call her back and she resumed a faculty position at Spelman in 1983 in the English Department, and later taught in the college’s Psychology Department.
Spelman shared a statement about Wade-Gayles in memoriam: “A scholar, poet, mentor, and activist, Dr. Wade-Gayles was more than a professor; she was a foundational pillar of the Spelman sisterhood. For decades, her voice resonated through our halls, urging our students to find their own ‘pushed back to strength’ moments and to ‘claim our space’.”
One of Wade-Gayles’ many contributions to the college is the Spelman Independent Scholars (SIS) program, designed to sharpen students’ critical thinking and writing skills. Through the year-long program, students have one-on-one research opportunities with instructors, which include oral history research in Accra, Ghana; Benin, West Africa; and Kingston, Jamaica. She also founded RESONANCE, a choral performance group. She became known as the “Queen Mother” of Spelman College.
During her tenure, Wade-Gayles wrote and published her second book in 1995, entitled Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman’s Journey Home. In the hugely biographical work, she explored the plight of growing up in Foote Holmes in Memphis’ segregated South, interracial friendships, the teachings of the women who raised her in strength and faith, and the pain of loving and losing those closest to her. She would go on to write seven works focusing on blackness, overcoming and women’s empowerment.
Charles McKinney, Ph.D., professor of History and Africana Studies at Rhodes College, who knew Wade-Gayles both personally and professionally, reflected on the impact of her life and work.
“I never took a class with her but I got to spend time with her in seminars and developed a personal relationship with her,” said McKinney, a 1989 Morehouse College graduate. “She came to Memphis a few years ago to do an oral history project and interviewed my wife Natalie, who is a Spelman grad. It was great to see her, discuss the state of the world and watch her pour into the Spelman students she brought with her,” added McKinney.
“She changed the course of history. For decades, she poured into her students at Spelman and others, like me, in her network, with her unrepentant brilliance and bottomless love, and challenged us to contend with the lives and words of Black women. She pushed her mentees to be our very best selves, inside the classroom and beyond. She was a master teacher, a mentor and a loving mother to her children and countless others who rested in her wisdom and grew from her encouragement. We will miss her mightily,” McKinney continued.
Wade-Gayles is survived by her daughter, Monica Gayles Dorsey (Spelman, 1991), a writer and PR guru; son, Jonathan Gayles (Morehouse, 1991), chair and a professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University, and granddaughter, currently enrolled in Spelman, Tyler Kate Dorsey (class of 2026).
