Alice Dugged (Cary), who was born in 1859 in New London, Indiana, was educated in Marshall, Michigan. She attended Wilberforce University and graduated in 1881 and taught and was assistant principal at Kansas City, Missouri’s Lincoln High School.
She became Mrs. Jefferson Alexander Carey, Jr. in 1885. They married at the residence of Dr. Benjamin W. Arnett, in Wilberforce, Ohio, in a small private ceremony. Her spouse, Rev. Jefferson Carey, was a minister in the A.M.E. Church. At some point the spelling of Carey became Cary.
The couple moved to Atlanta, Georgia. She was appointed second principal of Morris Brown College in 1886. A year later, she took on the additional role of first principal at Mitchell Street School.
In addition to Wilberforce, Cary studied at the University of Chicago, Howard University, Clark College and Morris Brown College. She became a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., which was founded at Howard University on January 16, 1920. Cary helped establish the second chapter at Morris Brown College in 1921.
Cary was foremost in the fight to establish a library for African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia. She became the first librarian of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue Branch of the Carnegie Library when it opened in 1921. It was the first Atlanta library available to African Americans when the city of Atlanta was segregated by race. In a 1926 letter to the editor in the Atlanta Constitution, Cary noted that the library had circulated more than 1,000 books and had a juvenile membership of 4,000. She signed the letter, “Yours for the children’s sake.”
Cary was also involved in many political and community activities, including as the Georgia State Chairman of the Colored Woman’s Committee and the Georgia State Federation of Colored Women, of which she was a charter member and president.
Cary died in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941. Her obituary noted that she requested “no flowers.”
In 1996, the Sweet Auburn Area Improvement Association and the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta, dedicated a cast bronze relief sculpture by Brian R. Owens honoring Cary. It is at the intersection of Auburn Avenue NE and Hilliard Street NE.
