Transcript Prominent Africian-Americans in West Virginia

Mildred MitchellBateman
The first AfricanAmerican woman to
head a West Virginia
state government agency
Mildred
MitchellBateman
Mildred Mitchell-Bateman was the
first African-American woman to
be named to a high ranking office
in West Virginia state government.
In 1962, she became director of the
Department of Mental Health and
served in that capacity for fifteen
years.
J. R. Clifford
Pioneer journalist,
lawyer, and civil
rights leader
J. R. Clifford was
a trailblazer in
many aspects of
West Virginia's
black history. He
broke ground in
education,
journalism, law,
and civil rights.
Some of Clifford's most important
contributions to black history were in
the field of law.
He was the first African American to
pass the West Virginia bar
examination.
In 1896, Clifford brought the first
legal challenge of the state's
segregated school system to the court.
In the case of Martin v. Board of
Education, the Supreme Court ruled the
Martin children were not allowed to
attend the white school even though the
alternative meant not receiving an
education. The Martin decision upheld the
state's segregation policy, which was not
overturned until the Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas decision by
the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954.
John W. Davis
President of West
Virginia State
College and civil
rights leader
John
Warren
Davis
John Warren Davis emerged from
the prejudices of the Deep South
to become one of the nation's
most distinguished educators and
earliest civil rights leaders.
John Warren Davis became
president of West Virginia
Collegiate Institute (present-day
West Virginia State College) at
Institute upon the personal
recommendation of famed educator
Carter G. Woodson.
During Davis' tenure, West
Virginia State became one of the
leading black colleges in the
country in both academics and
athletics.
Martin Delany
The highest ranking
black officer in the
Union Army during the
Civil War
Martin
Delany
Martin
Delany
Martin Delany was born a slave and
rose to the rank of major, the highest
ranking African American in the
Union Army during
the Civil War.
Delany was involved in the early
planning stages of John Brown's raid
on Harpers Ferry. He was interested
in establishing a safe haven for
runaway slaves. However, Delany
and other prominent blacks, such as
Frederick Douglass, distanced
themselves from Brown as his
actions became more militant and
unpredictable.
During the Civil War, Delany served
as a physician and became the first
commissioned black officer in the
Union Army.
Elizabeth Simpson
Drewry
The first AfricanAmerican woman
elected to the West
Virginia Legislature
Elizabeth
Simpson
Drewry
In 1950, Elizabeth Simpson Drewry
became the first African- American
woman elected to the West Virginia
Legislature.
In 1948, she ran for the House of
Delegates (McDowell County) for
the first time, but was defeated in
the primary election
In 1950, Drewry ran
again and won the fifth
spot on the Democratic
ticket. In the general
election, she received
nearly 18,000 votes,
becoming the first
African-American
woman elected to the
legislature.
In 1927, Minnie Buckingham Harper
was appointed to succeed her late
husband in the West Virginia
Legislature, becoming the first black
woman in the nation to serve in a
state legislature. However, Harper
was never elected.
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Renowned black
literary scholar and
chair of Harvard
University's AfricanAmerican Studies
Department
With the publication of his 1989 book,
The Signifying Monkey: Toward a
Theory of Afro-American Literary
Criticism, Gates was recognized widely
as one of the leading scholars of
African- American studies.
In 1991, Gates was named chair of
Harvard University's African-American
Studies Department. In 1994, Gates'
award-winning book Colored People
was published, chronicling his youth
and the black community in Mineral
County.
Hal Greer
Huntington native and
member of the
basketball hall of fame
Hal Greer is the only black West
Virginia native enshrined in a major
sports hall of fame. He was born in
Huntington on June 26, 1936, and
was a basketball standout at
Frederick Douglass High School.
In 1955, coaching legend Cam
Henderson recruited Greer, a 6'2"guard, to attend Marshall College (now
Marshall University). Greer became the
first African American to play for a
major college team in the state.
During his fifteen-year career with
Syracuse and the Philadelphia 76ers,
Greer was one of the NBA's most
dominant guards, averaging 19.2
points per game.
Greer's number 15 jersey was
retired by the 76ers and in 1981, he
was elected to the Naismith Pro
Basketball Hall of Fame.
Greer was honored by his native city
of Huntington on two occasions. In
1966, Mayor R. O. Robertson hosted
"Hal Greer Day.” Twelve years later,
16th Street, which runs by Marshall's
campus, was renamed Hal Greer
Boulevard.
John C. Norman Jr.
Noted thoracic and
cardiovascular surgeon
and researcher
Noted thoracic and cardiovascular
surgeon and researcher John C.
Norman Jr. was born May 11, 1930,
in Charleston, West
Virginia.
After graduating
valedictorian from Garnet
High School in 1946, John
Norman entered Howard
University. He later
transferred to Harvard and
graduated magna cum laude
and Phi Beta Kappa in 1950.
John Norman received his M.
D. from Harvard Medical
School in 1954.
While in Boston Norman began important
research into a left ventricular assist
device for cardiac patients. This research
took him to the prestigious Texas Heart
Institute in 1972. For the next several
years, Norman worked on development of
the first abdominal left ventricular assist
device (ALVAD), which could be
implanted temporarily in patients suffering
cardiac failure after open-heart surgery.
For his work in medical
research, Norman was
awarded the 1985
Congressional High
Technology Award. He
previously was honored
as the Charleston
Gazette-Mail's West
Virginian of the Year
for 1971.
Christopher Payne
The first black member of
the West Virginia
Legislature
Christopher Payne was
the first African
American to serve in the
West Virginia
Legislature. He was
born a slave in Monroe
County on September 7,
1848, and was educated
by his mother.
After attending night school in
Charleston, he became one of the
first black teachers in present-day
Summers County. Payne was
ordained as a Baptist minister and
organized the Second Baptist
Church in Hinton.
Payne was a pioneer in the field of
black journalism and established
three newspapers -- the West Virginia
Enterprise, The Pioneer, and the
Mountain Eagle.
In 1896, Payne was elected to the
West Virginia Legislature as a
Republican delegate from Fayette
County.
Samuel W. Starks
Local and national leader
of the black Knights of
Pythias fraternal order
On September 18, 1892, Starks
formed a West Virginia Grand Lodge
of the Knights of Pythias, one of the
leading secret black
fraternal orders of the day. The
organization included representatives
from lodges at Raymond City,
Huntington, Charleston, and
Montgomery.
The black Knights of Pythias was an
important social organization for
African Americans. "It and other secret
orders enhanced the sense of
community and national connection
among blacks, providing them with
opportunities to share in business,
social, and civil activities under the
lodge's aegis.”(Dr. Ancella Bickley)
Leon Sullivan
Charleston native and
civil rights leader
Famed civil rights leader Leon H.
Sullivan was born in Charleston on
October 16, 1922.
He was raised in a small house in
a dirt alley in one of Charleston's
poorest sections.
At the age of twelve, he tried to
purchase a Coca-Cola in a drugstore on
Capitol Street. The proprietor refused
to sell him the drink, saying, "Stand on
your feet, boy. You can't sit here." This
incident inspired Sullivan's lifetime
pursuit of fighting racial prejudice.
Sullivan attended Charleston's
Garnet High School for blacks
and received a basketball and
football scholarship to West
Virginia State College in
1939. A foot injury ended his
athletic career and forced
Sullivan to pay for college by
working in a steel mill.
During a visit to West Virginia,
noted black minister Adam Clayton
Powell convinced Sullivan to move
to New York to attend the Union
Theological Seminary.
He moved to Philadelphia to take over
the Zion Baptist Church in 1950. Under
Sullivan's leadership the congregation
grew from 600 to over 4,000 in just a
decade. He also began organizing a civil
rights movement in Philadelphia.
Sullivan believed jobs were the key to
improving African-American lives and
asked that the city's largest companies
interview young blacks.
Sullivan realized one of the key
employment problems for blacks
was a lack of training for the
changing job market. African
Americans had been excluded from
the types of training which led to
better paying jobs. He formed the
Opportunities Industrialization
Center (OIC) to train and instill
pride in African Americans.
In the 1970s, Sullivan turned much
of his attention to ending the
system of apartheid in South
Africa. Again, he looked to
financial pressure to bring about
change. Sullivan was the first
black board member of General
Motors and encouraged the
company and other corporations to
use their economic influence to
end apartheid.
Booker T. Washington
Noted educator and
first president of
Tuskegee Institute
Booker T.
Washington
Booker T. Washington is
undoubtedly West Virginia's most
famous African American.
During the Civil War, his family was
freed and Booker's stepfather,
Washington Furgenson, moved to
Kanawha Salines (Malden),
Kanawha County, to work at the salt
furnaces.
Washington worked at a salt furnace
at the Salines at the age of nine and
later in a coal mine along Campbell's
Creek. He attended public schools
for a brief time under noted Kanawha
Valley African-American teacher
William H. Davis. Washington was
also a servant for Viola Ruffner, who
taught him how to read.
In 1872, Washington began attending
the Hampton Normal and Agricultural
Institute in Virginia. After graduating
in 1875, he returned to Malden to teach
school for both black children and
adults.
After studying at the Wayland
Seminary in Washington, D.C., he
taught at Hampton Institute. In 1881,
he was chosen to direct a new normal
school for blacks in Tuskegee,
Alabama. Under Washington's
leadership, the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute became one of the
leading African-American educational
institutions in the country.
Washington presided over Tuskegee
Institute until his death on November
14, 1915. He wrote twelve books, the
most famous of which, Up From
Slavery (1906), recounted his early life
in Malden.
Carter G. Woodson
widely regarded as the leading
writer on black history of his
time.
His founding of the American
Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History in 1915 has been
called the start of the black history
movement.