Career
She devoted her life to the development of educational opportunities for African-Americans. Dickey was born near Dayton, Ohio. Although her education only began at the age of sixteen, she received a teacher"s certificate only three years later.
During the Civil War she traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to teach recently freed former slaves.
After the American Civil War, she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), graduating in 1869. She returned to Mississippi to continue working with African-Americans recently freed from slavery.
She organized and established the Mount Hermon Female Seminary, which opened in October 1875 in Clinton, Mississippi. The Seminary was eventually closed in 1924 by the American Missionary Association, which had its own college in Tougaloo, Mississippi.
Dickey never married but raised several children left in her care.