Jeanette Brooks Priebe, Date of Birth
TweetJeanette Brooks Priebe
Kentucky woman during the Civil Rights Era
Date of Birth: 
About Jeanette Brooks Priebe
- Jeanette Brooks Priebe (born July 4, 1937) was the Tennessee-born Director of the Louisville Civil Service Board in Kentucky when she instituted the first affirmative action hiring program for the Louisville metro area public service personnel.
- During the 1970s, Priebe directed the integration of the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville Division of Fire. Priebe led her department in devising a new method of hiring new applicants.
- Instead of receiving only the top candidates, the hiring department would be able to review all applicants, assuring then that all were considered – including African Americans and women.
- The new organizational process included a specific job classification system that took a year of intense analysis to complete.
- Four years before, these descriptions were vague, and a class action suit had been filed on behalf of the one African-American employee.
- The county government's Personnel Department became "more centralized and, more importantly, more professional." There were also new procedures for applicant screening and recruiting.
- Priebe once said, "Unless you're allowed to find the most qualified people, it's a literal misuse of tax money."After working as the Director of the Civil Service Board, Priebe worked for then-Judge Mitch McConnell as Jefferson County Personnel and Executive Council Agency Member-At-Large for the International Personnel Management Association. Jeanette Brooks Priebe was born in Bolivar, Tennessee and attended Union University in Jackson, Tennessee before enrolling in Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
- She was the first woman to serve as the Director of the Civil Service Board in Louisville, Kentucky.
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