MUNCIE, Ind. — Muncie City Hall hosted the Muncie-Delaware County Coalition of Women’s 34th annual Vivian V. Conley Recognition Awards. The recipients included Linda Daniel for Distinction in Community Health, Marcy Minton for Distinction in Philanthropy, Bette Sloss for Distinction in Civic Engagement, Erina Tyree for Distinction in Social Justice, Diane Watters for Distinction in Community Education, and LaShanta Vaughn for Distinction in Business.

The Conley Recognition Awards have been given to over 275 local women and honors Vivian Conley, a civil rights and higher education advocate of Muncie who died in 1993. When she enrolled at Ball State University at the age of 61, she founded the Nontraditional Student Association while earning a master’s in gerontology. She once said in an interview that education “will free us from the shackles we live in.”

Besides her advocacy for higher education, Conley also contributed to the desegregation of Tuhey Pool in the 1950s and boycotting of Confederate flags at Southside High School in the ’60s and ’70s. When Muncie’s Poor People’s Campaign ran a slate of candidates in the 1971 city election, she lead the party’s registration committee. She was also active with the Trinity United Methodist Church as an education coordinator, and worked at the Indiana Employment Division.

Conley has also been honored over the years with the Vivian Conley Lounge at Ball State’s L.A. Pittenger Student Center in 1995, the Conley Library that has since been renamed to the Centennial Library, and the Vivian Conley Memorial Scholarship Fund. In late 2024, Ball State’s Multicultural Center was named in honor of Conley and Hurley Goodall, another famous civil rights leader of Muncie.

When Marcy Minton accepted her award, she spoke about the importance of preserving the legacy of Women’s Equality Day, and that the award is a reminder of the progress that is possible. Minton said that the philanthropy she does is not about dollar figures, but about the impact it can bring for people.