Marietta Johnson

Johnson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and moved with her family to Fairhope, Alabama, in 1902.

[1] Johnson had been a teacher in the regular school system in Minnesota and had radical ideas on education reform.

Encouraged and funded by friends in the small experimental community of Fairhope, Alabama, Johnson began her revolutionary school on a ten-acre campus – teaching, writing, training teachers in her method.

Johnson was in great demand as a lecturer and, after John Dewey's favorable review of her school in 1915, she achieved worldwide recognition as a leader in the Progressive Education movement.

Through the great depression, two world wars and Johnson's death in 1938, the Organic School has never closed its doors and is still operating in Fairhope.