She promoted hope, teaching her children that education could provide better opportunities, despite harsh, unjust treatment in their segregated world.
When many Kentucky institutions were continuing to abide by the Day Law (a piece of legislation promoting segregation in higher education), Frye pushed boundaries.
Although both her parents had been given a mere sixth grade education, Frye was able to achieve academic success, receiving three degrees.
[3] In 1954 an extension class from the University of Kentucky was held at the Danville High School for teacher professional development.
Frye attended two sessions of the class, and John Glenn, the superintendent at the time, notified her on behalf of the university that they had decided that the finding from Lyman T. Johnson's lawsuit that won blacks the right to attend the University of Kentucky graduate school did not extend to extension work.
"[2] She hired a lawyer but none of the other African American students would testify that they too had applied and were turned down due to race.
"[3] Fearing a final blow from the prejudiced nature of her instructors at the university, she avoided taking her oral exams to finish her degree.
"[3] Frye was the first African American woman to obtain the Master of Arts in Library Science degree from the University of Kentucky.
Although she was officially employed as a teacher in the segregated institutions, her actual job requirements exceeded teaching.
"[2] Frye was engaged in the Civil Rights Movement at its peak in Kentucky, and did not try to hide the fact.
"I organized the young people who made efforts at sitting in at public lunch counters here in Danville and I was teaching at Bate School then.
She helped bring cross-denominational ministers from around Danville to form a human relations counsel.
Frye worked to bring in the first African American Broadway star to perform at Centre.
"Porgy and Bess," featuring Danville native R. Todd Duncan, was the college's first integrated performance.
After the success of that performance, Centre opened all similar events to a newly broadened, integrated audience.
She was a longtime leader in the Danville NAACP, serving as its president from the 1950s to 1968, during a critical time in the movement.
After the war with the veterans returning home, the discrimination and segregation were felt even more keenly, and she helped re-organize the chapter.
With her leadership and the organized efforts of the local NAACP, they spearheaded a campaign for the first African American since the 1920s to be elected to the city council.