A Classroom, a Microphone, a Community: Remembering Mabel B. Campbell

Photo above - A Meeting of the Blue Triangle Branch of the YWCA, Wheeling, W. Va. We do not yet have a clear usable photo of Miss Mabel B Campbell. When we do we will add it here.

In March 1926, a newspaper reporter walked into Lincoln School and found a classroom alive with the small wonders of childhood. The reporter wrote about -

There were birds peering from handmade paper cages. Easter baskets and rabbits brightened the walls. Children made looms and wove mats, illustrated stories written on the blackboard, and explored their own ideas at a sand table. Reading, writing, and number work unfolded alongside the pleasure of making something with their hands.

Their teacher was Miss Mabel B. Campbell.

Then the reporter offered a detail that transforms an appealing classroom scene into something much more meaningful: Campbell had learned to read and write in that very same room.

The child had returned as the teacher.

For the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, this is the kind of discovery that makes an archive come alive. A name appearing repeatedly in school appointments, church announcements, sorority reports, and community columns suddenly becomes a person standing before us—a woman helping another generation begin where she herself had started.

As we follow Campbell through the surviving newspapers, that classroom opens onto a much larger world. We find her preparing students to debate atomic policy over the radio, accompanying young women to leadership conferences, organizing opportunities for Black Girl Scouts, and helping sustain the institutions of Black Wheeling.

And often, preserving these accomplishments in print, we find another Mabel.

Mabel Hull wrote about the community. Mabel Campbell helped educate and organize it. 

Their shared first name is a delightful coincidence. Their overlapping work gives us something far more valuable: a record of Black women helping a community see its possibilities.

A Moundsville Beginning

Our genealogical research places Mabel Campbell’s birth in Moundsville, West Virginia, on March 23, 1902. Her parents were Joseph Campbell, born in 1866, and Jesse Blanche Jordan Campbell, born on February 20, 1876. Her older sister, Frieda Alice Campbell, had been born on March 25, 1900.

Those family dates bring the generations into focus.

Joseph’s birth came in the same year that Wheeling’s Board of Education established its tax-supported public school for Black children. By the time his daughter entered the world, that institution had become part of the educational landscape of the Upper Ohio Valley.

For Black families, its importance extended beyond Wheeling’s municipal boundaries. The newspapers repeatedly identify Campbell as a Moundsville resident, while her education and much of her professional life centered on Lincoln.

That connection is an important part of our regional story. Black community life followed routes between neighboring towns, churches, schools, workplaces, and relatives.

Moundsville and Wheeling belonged to the same world of relationships, even when segregation complicated access to the institutions within it.

Campbell graduated from Lincoln High School with the Class of 1920.

Six years later, a reporter would find her back inside the school, guiding children through the beginnings of their own education.

Where She Had Learned Her Letters

The March 29, 1926, article appeared beneath an urgent headline:

“New Building Is Needed at Lincoln School Here.”

Its account of Campbell’s classroom was part of a larger examination of overcrowding and inadequate facilities. The reporter praised the faculty’s qualifications while describing the limitations under which they worked.

Campbell had completed teacher training at an institution the article called the State Normal School at Charleston and had pursued additional study at an eastern college. She had received specialized preparation for primary teaching, and the reporter saw the results in her pupils’ work.

The contrast runs through the article: capable teachers, eager children, insufficient room.

For our readers following Lincoln’s long struggle for adequate facilities, Campbell gives that institutional history a human center. She was one of the educators doing the daily work while the community pressed for better conditions.

The paper birds and woven mats matter, too. They remind us that this was a classroom of children whose education included imagination, curiosity, and delight. Campbell was creating an engaging place to learn within the space available to her.

A 1927 faculty appointment list confirms her assignment to first grade, alongside Winnie R. Page, another teacher whose name runs through Lincoln’s history.

Think of the children entering those rooms. Some would be nervous. Some would already know the teacher through church or family connections. Some would arrive impatient to begin.

Campbell understood the place from both sides of the desk.

A Teacher Who Kept Studying

The newspaper trail follows Campbell beyond primary education.

By the late 1930s, she was advising older students. In 1947, the published Lincoln faculty roster identified her subject as social studies. Other accounts described her work in social science and her supervision of a senior course called Problems of Democracy.

Her own education continued alongside her teaching.

A 1930 report in the Baltimore Afro-American, preserved by the Ohio County Public Library, listed Campbell among local educators attending summer school, placing her at Butler College in Indianapolis with fellow Lincoln teacher Oliver Shannon.

In July 1947, another report announced her appointment to the summer staff of Bluefield Teachers College, where she would teach economics.

That appointment deserves attention. The woman who had once taught Lincoln children their letters was also being called upon to teach at the college level.

Her professional life reached beyond a single classroom, subject, or town. She continued developing her knowledge while helping younger people develop theirs.

The Bluefield announcement also contributes a useful detail to her family history. It identified her as the daughter of the late Joseph Campbell and Mrs. Blanche Campbell. Although we have not yet located Joseph’s death date, the notice establishes that he had died before July 1947.

Even a professional appointment can quietly preserve a family milestone.

Teaching the “Problems of Democracy” in Jim Crow America

There is something especially compelling about a Black teacher leading a course called Problems of Democracy during segregation.

Her students lived within some of those problems every day.

They studied government, citizenship, and public affairs while attending a school separated from other public schools by race. Their experiences gave the language of democracy an immediacy that a textbook alone could scarcely supply.

Campbell took those studies beyond the classroom.

In October 1942, she brought Lincoln’s twelfth-grade social science class to the newspaper offices. The account preserved the names of students including Ina Jackson, Vivian Gray, Betty Johnson, Clarence Cochran, Theodore Meeks, Emma Shelton, Eloise Catlin, Katherine Jackson, Alice Turner, and James Peterson.

They saw the machinery and processes through which a newspaper reached its readers.

Five years later, she returned with another group. On September 30, 1947, the News-Register reported that Lincoln’s senior Problems of Democracy class had toured the plant under her supervision, with Peter C. Boyd of the editorial staff acting as guide.

These visits made public communication something students could examine firsthand. News was produced by people, through decisions and processes they could learn to understand.

For us, the connection is particularly satisfying. We are now recovering Campbell’s work through newspapers she once helped her students explore.

Black Students, a Radio Microphone, and the Atomic Age

One of the most remarkable clippings in the collection dates to February 29, 1948.

Its headline read:

“Lincoln Youths Debate Sharing of Atom Bomb.”

Four Lincoln students were preparing to participate in Junior Town Meeting of the Air, a public affairs program involving Oglebay Institute, Bethany College, and radio station WWVA.

The students were Dorothy Turner, Helen Savage, Mildred Shelton, and Lucille Cothran. Alternates included Mary Hampton, Ruth Speight, Stokes Murray, and Donald Glenn.

Their subject placed them inside one of the defining arguments of the postwar world: the international control and sharing of atomic power and the tools of peace.

Campbell helped guide their research alongside English teacher Winnie R. Page and principal Philip N. Reed. Harry L. Ice, head of Bethany College’s philosophy department, was to moderate.

The students had already presented their arguments at a Lincoln assembly, where their classmates subjected them to what the newspaper called a “barrage of questions.”

That detail is wonderful.

These young speakers were expected to prepare, explain, defend, and respond. Their audience would hear Black Wheeling’s students thinking through questions troubling governments around the world.

The report also described their accomplishments. Turner had earned recognition in an Elks oratorical contest. Savage was a Golden Horseshoe winner. Shelton had repeatedly won academic honors and led the Y-Teens. Cothran held student council responsibilities and had also distinguished herself in public speaking.

Campbell and her colleagues were helping students carry those abilities into a wider public forum.

In a country that regularly underestimated Black young people, their voices traveled over the airwaves.

Opening the Door to Leadership

Campbell’s work also helped students enter rooms where young leaders gathered.

In June 1949, Marion D. Newman, a Lincoln senior and vice president of its student council, prepared to attend the national conference of the National Association of Student Councils in Cincinnati.

Newman was also treasurer of West Virginia’s Northern Co-Government Association. The conference would bring together student representatives from across the United States and schools beyond its borders.

Its theme was “Youth Leaders Today—World Leaders Tomorrow.”

Campbell, identified as Lincoln’s student council adviser and social science instructor, would accompany her and participate in training for advisers.

The combination says much about Campbell’s approach. A student would encounter a larger world, and her teacher would continue learning how to prepare other students to do the same.

In February 1955, Mabel Hull reported another such journey. Lincoln juniors Rose Kinney and Romaine Dent would attend Know Your Government Day in Charleston, accompanied by Campbell.

Kinney was junior class president, student council vice president, and president of the Senior Y-Teens. Dent was a student council member, captain of the cheerleaders, and corresponding secretary of the Senior Y-Teens.

They would participate in an open forum, hear Governor William C. Marland, visit the legislature, and tour the Capitol. Their itinerary also included a visit to West Virginia State College.

Campbell was helping young women practice citizenship in the places where public decisions were made.

For girls growing up in segregated America, being prepared to enter such spaces carried its own significance. Their teacher expected them to have something worth contributing when they arrived.

A World Friendship Pin in a Segregated Valley

Campbell’s commitment to girls extended beyond Lincoln.

On March 14, 1950, the newspaper published a photograph of her receiving a World Trefoil pin as leader of Girl Scout Troop 15, described as the first Black troop in the Moundsville–Glen Dale council.

The troop had been organized that year.

Its members had been invited to a gathering at Kirkside in Moundsville, where the theme was “World Friendship Begins at Home.” The body of the article identified the hosts as Troop 6.

The girls pledged allegiance, sang, received friendship pins, and shared refreshments.

White Scouts pinned the emblems on the Black Scouts in a gesture the newspaper presented as sincere friendship.

Most of Campbell’s Scouts, the report noted, attended school in Wheeling.

The surviving account names girls including Mary Scales, Barbara Ann Johnson, Thelma Scales, Alberta Mitchell, Ella Mae Scales, Patricia Walters, and Wanda Walters.

They were also selling cookies to purchase uniforms.

Here is childhood in recognizable form: songs, badges, uniforms, cookies, and the excitement of a special gathering. Yet the newspaper’s racial labels and its emphasis on a first meeting between the troops make the boundaries of the time equally visible.

Campbell was helping Black girls participate in the experiences and traditions of American youth.

The promise of world friendship had to begin somewhere close enough for a child to reach.

At Kirkside, it began with an invitation, a shared afternoon, and a pin fastened to a uniform.

Her Home Became a Place to Build

In the spring of 1943, Campbell’s Moundsville home became the setting for another important development.

The April 4 News-Register reported the establishment of a local graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority serving Wheeling and the Ohio Valley.

Laura Lovelace, the Great Lakes regional director, conducted the organizing ceremony. Campbell was among the officers named in the report.

Other women included Cornelia E. Williams, Helen L. Jones, Gwendolyn Edwards, and Margaret W. Powell.

The chapter became familiar to local readers as Beta Theta Omega.

Its work connected educated Black women in the valley with a national organization concerned with service, health, public affairs, and educational opportunity.

The meeting at Campbell’s home gives that history a wonderfully concrete beginning.

Before a chapter could appear in a convention program or sponsor a public event, women had to gather, organize, accept responsibilities, and decide how to proceed.

Her home provided a place for that work.

Through the years, Hull’s columns followed the chapter’s activities. In April 1950, she reported that proceeds from its style show would support civic betterment and a scholarship for a Lincoln girl.

The event offered pleasure and purpose together. Fashion, sociability, fundraising, and educational opportunity all belonged in the same undertaking.

That is a pattern our Foundation has encountered repeatedly in Black Wheeling. Community enjoyment helped sustain community advancement.

“Miss Campbell Again President”

By April 1953, Hull identified Campbell as the chapter’s basileus, or president.

In June 1954, the headline made her continuing leadership unmistakable:

“Miss Campbell Again President of Sorority.”

The officers serving with her included Geraldine Newman as vice president, Eileen Miller as recording secretary, Leila Powell as treasurer, Elaine Shannon as corresponding secretary, Maggie Powell as Ivy Leaf reporter, Martha Brown as historian, and Ila Williams as dean of pledges.

The national theme Hull reported was “Equal Responsibilities, Equal Opportunities.”

For this group of women, those words had substantial weight. They were teachers and organizers working in communities where opportunity remained constrained. Their professional preparation and public service strengthened their insistence on fuller participation.

Campbell and Maggie Powell also represented the chapter at the Great Lakes regional conference in Cincinnati in April 1954, joining delegates from a five-state area.

In March 1955, Hull announced a Founders Day observance at the Blue Triangle Branch YWCA. Leila Powell chaired the program, Campbell remained president, and the sorority’s American Council on Human Rights committee would lead the afternoon.

The scheduled speakers included Dr. N. G. Harris of Macedonia Baptist and the Rev. B. J. Highsmith of Wayman A.M.E.

Here were several of Black Wheeling’s institutions working in concert: school, sorority, church, and YWCA. Campbell moved among them, helping connect their people and purposes.

Faith Was Part of the Work

Wayman A.M.E. Church appears repeatedly in Campbell’s public life.

In 1951, she helped chair its annual Woman’s Day program alongside Susan Jackson and Laura Lee. In 1953, she chaired another program featuring a visiting speaker whose work connected church life, women’s organizations, and international affairs.

By September 1954, Hull identified Campbell as Wayman’s financial secretary, serving with the Rev. John H. Harris, recording secretary, and Clem Williams, treasurer.

Such offices rarely receive the attention given to a public speech or an anniversary celebration. Yet an institution depends on people willing to keep its records, manage its obligations, and make its work reliable.

Campbell’s service helped sustain a church that provided spiritual fellowship and a place for education, music, public discussion, and community gatherings.

Her work with the Lincoln Senior Y-Teens brought young people into that wider religious and civic life. In February 1956, Hull reported that the group would lead devotions titled “Each Man Is My Brother” at Macedonia Baptist during an exchange of pulpits with First Baptist Church.

Campbell was their adviser.

Again, the purpose reached beyond a school activity. Young women were being prepared to participate publicly, speak with confidence, and help lead a community occasion.

Serving the Country While Teaching Its Children

During World War II, Campbell also helped direct Lincoln’s Victory Corps.

A February 1943 report named her general chairman. An April account described an extensive undertaking involving students and faculty.

There were books and periodicals to collect for service members, useful items to make and donate, war bonds and stamps to sell, and physical fitness activities to organize. A pre-flight aeronautics class studied aviation under Oliver T. Shannon. J. W. Kinney supervised production work. Gertrude Dickson, Cornelia E. Williams, Ruth E. Banks, and other colleagues shared responsibilities.

Campbell helped coordinate the larger effort.

The students’ goal of purchasing a military jeep through bond and stamp sales gave their fundraising a tangible focus. A Victory Ball at the Pythian Building, with Martha Banks and her orchestra, brought the campaign into one of Black Wheeling’s best-known community spaces.

These activities belong within the complicated history of Black American patriotism.

Lincoln’s students and teachers contributed to the national war effort while living within a segregated society.

Their service was part of the country’s history. So were their expectations of the country.

Campbell’s work helped students understand themselves as people with responsibilities, abilities, and a stake in what America would become.

When Lincoln Closed, Her Work Continued

For many readers of our Foundation’s blogs, Lincoln’s closure in 1956 marks a powerful dividing line.

The institution that had educated generations of Black children ceased operating as a K–12 school. Families faced new possibilities and new uncertainties. Teachers, too, entered a changed educational landscape.

Campbell’s newspaper record continues beyond that moment.

In August 1959, the county’s published appointments placed Mabel B. Campbell on the faculty of Wheeling High School.

Her name appears among teachers serving a public school system undergoing the consequences of desegregation. She brought into that setting years of experience developed at Lincoln.

Her association with Junior Town Meeting continued as well.

In October 1963, the newspaper published excerpts from a Wheeling High panel she sponsored on the question:

“Is the Nuclear Test Ban a Step Toward World Peace?”

The subject creates a striking connection to the Lincoln broadcast of 1948. Fifteen years later, another group of young people under Campbell’s guidance was examining the dangers and possibilities of the atomic age.

The school assignment had changed. Her commitment to informed student voices endured.

In April 1964, a recognition luncheon honored teachers with long service to Junior Town Meeting. Campbell was credited with seventeen years.

Seventeen years of preparing students to research a question, organize an argument, face an audience, and answer back thoughtfully.

That is an extraordinary educational legacy.

The Woman Beyond the Offices

The records also allow a glimpse of Campbell enjoying the company of her peers.

Wheeling reports in the Baltimore Afro-American place her in the Idle-a-While Bridge Club, among women whose names also appear on Lincoln’s faculty and in community organizations: Winnie Page, Lelia Powell, Lucille Smith, Amanda Arrington, Gertrude Dickson, and others.

There were card tables, refreshments, conversation, and evenings spent together.

These moments deserve a place in her story. A life of service was also a life of friendship. The women who shared committee work and classroom responsibilities had reasons to gather simply because they enjoyed one another’s company.

Recovering that side of their lives helps us see them more fully.

They built institutions. They also laughed, visited, played cards, and made homes in the community they served.

A Name That Belongs Beside Lincoln’s Story

The genealogical information recovered for this research places Campbell’s death in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in November 1974, at the age of seventy-two. Her mother, Jesse Blanche, had died on December 27, 1960. Her sister Frieda Alice lived until March 9, 1985.

Much remains to be learned about Campbell’s later years and the circumstances that took her to Milwaukee.

But the surviving Wheeling newspapers already preserve a substantial life.

We can follow a Lincoln graduate back into the room where she learned her letters. We can see her guide children from early lessons toward an understanding of government and world affairs. We can trace her work through Girl Scouts, Y-Teens, sorority leadership, church service, wartime organizing, and an educational career that continued after Lincoln closed.

There is a personal connection here for our Foundation, too. Campbell was part of Lincoln’s faculty during the years when Beverly Pervall, later Beverly Stradwick, completed her high school education and graduated with the Class of 1950.

Campbell belonged to the educational community surrounding one of the women for whom this Foundation is named.

That gives these discoveries a special closeness. It also reinforces why the work matters beyond any single family. A school’s history includes the educators who helped its students imagine a future, prepare for it, and find the confidence to step forward.

Mabel Hull left us reports of that work. Mabel Campbell spent decades doing it.

And somewhere near the beginning of the story, in a crowded Lincoln classroom brightened with handmade birds and Easter baskets, a teacher stood where she had once been a child—and helped another child begin.

-T

Historical Terminology Note

This article includes historical terms such as “colored” and “Negro” when quoting original sources or identifying organizations as they were known at the time. These terms reflect the language and racial conditions of their era; their inclusion is not an endorsement of their use today.

In our own narrative, we use Black and African American, as appropriate. We preserve historical wording to document the past faithfully while honoring the dignity, humanity, and experiences of the people whose stories we share.

Sources and Notes

• Wheeling Intelligencer, March 29, 1926, “New Building Is Needed at Lincoln School Here.” Describes Campbell’s primary classroom, identifies her as a Lincoln Class of 1920 graduate, outlines her teacher preparation and additional study, and states that she learned to read and write in the same room where she was teaching.

• Wheeling Intelligencer, June 28, 1927, school board appointments and faculty assignments. Lists Campbell as a first-grade teacher at Lincoln, alongside Winnie R. Page. Additional appointment lists in the collection document her continued service, including reports dated May 7, 1935; August 14, 1938; September 5, 1939; August 20, 1944; August 22, 1947; August 24, 1948; and July 16, 1954.

• Wheeling News-Register, October 9, 1942, newspaper plant visit by Lincoln’s twelfth-grade social science class; and September 30, 1947, “Lincoln Class In Newspaper Visit,” concerning the senior Problems of Democracy class. Student names in the narrative are drawn from the 1942 report.

• Wheeling News-Register, February 13, 1943, and April 11, 1943, reports on Lincoln’s Victory Corps. The February item was published in the Intelligencer; the April article, “Lincoln High School Students Participate in Victory Drive,” appeared in the News-Register. These document Campbell’s chairmanship and the faculty and student war-service activities.

• Wheeling News-Register, July 27, 1947, “Lincoln School Teachers” item. Announces Campbell’s appointment to teach economics on the summer staff at Bluefield Teachers College and identifies her as the daughter of the late Joseph Campbell and Mrs. Blanche Campbell.

• Wheeling News-Register, February 29, 1948, “Lincoln Youths Debate Sharing of Atom Bomb.” Names participating students, alternates, faculty advisers, and moderator; describes preparation for the WWVA broadcast.

• Wheeling News-Register, June 19, 1949, “Lincoln High Will Have Delegate,” concerning Marion D. Newman’s participation in the National Association of Student Councils conference and Campbell’s accompanying role.

• Wheeling News-Register, March 14, 1950, “World Friendship Token Offered New Scout Troop,” with accompanying photograph and caption. Identifies Campbell as leader of the first Black Girl Scout troop in the Moundsville–Glen Dale council. The body identifies the host troop as Troop 6; the photograph caption gives a different number. The narrative follows the body of the article. Patricia’s surname also differs between caption and body; the narrative follows the body’s “Walters.”

• Wheeling News-Register, April 4, 1943, “New Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Organized in Ohio Valley District”; Mabel M. Hull, April 23, 1950, report on the sorority’s style show and scholarship purpose; April 5, 1953, chapter officers; April 25, 1954, regional conference; June 13, 1954, “AKA Elects Officers At June Meet”; and March 20, 1955, “Beta Theta Founders Day Is Observed.”

• Wheeling News-Register, June 3, 1951, “Mrs. Prunty Wayman AME Guest Speaker”; Mabel Hull, August 30, 1953, Wayman program announcement; September 5, 1954, church officers; February 6, 1955, Rose Kinney and Romaine Dent’s Know Your Government Day trip; and February 19, 1956, “Baptists Exchange Pulpits,” including Campbell’s role as Senior Y-Teens adviser.

• Wheeling Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register, August 12, 1959, county teacher appointments placing Campbell at Wheeling High School; Wheeling News-Register, October 4, 1963, Junior Town Meeting nuclear test-ban debate; and April 29, 1964, Junior Town Meeting recognition luncheon, crediting Campbell with seventeen years of service.

• Ohio County Public Library, “Wheeling Notes in the Baltimore Afro-American”. Includes the July 26, 1930, report identifying Campbell’s summer study at Butler College in Indianapolis and reports documenting her participation in the Idle-a-While Bridge Club. Wheeling WV History |