Samaria (Mitcham) Bailey is an African-American woman who is known as an instrumental figure in the civil rights movement.

[3] Based on Samaria's experiences, Hendricks improved the tutoring program, recruiting students from as far as UCLA to help teach.

At Mercer, Samaria continued to endure racist remarks from her peers on a daily basis.

In her chemistry class, she was the only female pupil, and the professor had to force another student to be her lab partner.

She was offered recording contracts with several music labels, but rejected them to continue pursuing her education.