Educator. Romana Riley was a nationally recognized educator and on the cusp of the progressive education movement during the Great Depression. She was one of a handful of educators throughout the United States who risked their careers to fight for educational reforms. Teachers and educators from throughout the United States often traveled to Savannah to observe her classroom methods. She was the author of the book Midget Savannah: An Analysis of How the Pupils and Faculty of a Public Elementary School Have Developed a Program of Citizenship as Part of the Curriculum and many other publications. Elmer L. Towns, the co-founder of Liberty University in Virginia, dedicated his book, Have the Public Schools 'Had It'? to Romana Riley because of her national impact on education. Riley's papers are held at the Georgia Historical Society, within the Gallaway and Mackie Family Papers at the University of North Carolina, and elsewhere. She devoted her career to the public schools of Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia and, through her writings and activism, to educators throughout the United States and the world. When the Great Depression hit, she was concerned by the number of children who came to school hungry. Realizing that gnawing hunger did not make for great learners, she introduced what has become known nationally as the Free Lunch Program. This was the recognition by early progressive educators like Riley that schools needed to become more than teachers of the mind but also needed to tend to the physical detriments students faced to their learning. She became a principal of the Waters Avenue School in Savannah and used the school as a laboratory to explore some of the prime objectives she wanted to instill in students and share with educators throughout the world. With the assistance of her teachers, she developed a completely new curriculum based on the virtues of good citizenship, civic responsibility, accountability, and respect. She developed a model for instilling civic virtue by mirroring metropolitan government for the school. The students and teachers shared leadership in the school. Like her contemporaries, famed Italian educator Maria Montessori and fellow Savannah educator Nina Anderson Pape, Riley's goal was to make education student centered. She emphasized love over harsh discipline, creative play over memorization, and treating every child as a unique individual. Under her leadership students worked in groups to complete projects, help each other with their assignments, and make the school a city of learning. She wrote, "We feel that children must also grow and develop in those skills and abilities which will permit them to take an active and enlightened part in the affairs of the school. These skills are more or less useless if developed apart from actual contact with the end in view. It is our conviction that it is better to teach Mary and Johnny through arithmetic than to teach arithmetic to Mary and Johnny." Thus in 1928 the famed Riley Leadership Program, later used by many progressive educators, was born. Waters Avenue School in Savannah ultimately was renamed Romana Riley School in her honor. Her double legacy of the Riley Leadership Program and the Free Lunch Program continue throughout the United States.