About Ricki Fairley
- Ricki Fairley"I didn't realize ... that we were [a] middle class Black family. I know we lived in the suburbs, we had moved out of the city, and I had a lot of things."
Growing Up
Born on June 17, 1956 in Washington D.C., Ricki Fairley '78 grew up in Silver Spring, MD where she lived with her two parents, Richard Fairley '55, Wilma Fairley-Holmes, and her younger sister.
In addition to both her parents being educators with Masters degrees in education from Stanford University, her dad was a civil rights leader and her mom went on to lead one of the first Diversity and Inclusion programs in the country.
She describes her childhood as a Cosby [Show] childhood, indicating that she was very blessed to live the life that she did. Both of her parents had careers that allowed them to be a middle-class Black family, a status that Ms. Fairley did not quite understand until she arrived at Dartmouth.
She acknowledges that her parents made a very intentional effort to ensure the cultural awareness of her and her sister by encouraging them to be active members of their Black church and by surrounding them with their Black family members. However, it was not until Fairley's exposure to other students from different backgrounds that she began to understand not everyone shared the same experience of attending all-white, all-girls, Catholic schools their whole childhood.
Her whole academic career, she had been not only the only Black person, but also the only Black girl in her classes and schools.
Ms. Fairley's upbringing made her experience one that could be considered pretty uncommon.
"I didn't realize what middle-class was, until I went to Hanover. I grew up around people that were like me. I went to all-white schools. I was pretty much always the only Black in my class. In my high school, I was the only Black in my high school for most of years. I went to private to Catholic school, but I didn't really know anything different."