A Voice, a Chorus, a Cause: The Remarkable Public Life of Mrs. Emma Keys

The Foundation is searching for better photos of Mrs Emma Keys. We are using this newspaper scan until then. This photo shows Mrs Keys wearing her lovely Elks regalia of the Purple Cross

An eight-year-old boy needed blood.

In September 1950, the Wheeling News-Register reported that Johnny Lee Waitts of Triadelphia suffered from a rare form of anemia requiring frequent transfusions. His family could no longer afford to purchase the blood he needed. Each treatment brought another expense, another worry, another question about where help might come from.

Mrs. Emma Keys answered.

Working through the child welfare department of the Black Elks’ women’s organization, Keys began assembling a response that reached beyond one frightened family. Herman Newman mobilized Elks connections throughout the Northern Panhandle. Virgreed Taylor, commander of Wheeling’s American Legion Post 89, brought the veterans into the effort.

Together, they developed plans for a blood and plasma bank intended to help Johnny and other children facing similar circumstances.

The three even visited the West Virginia penitentiary in Moundsville to seek cooperation in obtaining donors.

There, in a newspaper photograph, stood Emma Keys alongside Newman and Taylor: a woman helping turn a child’s emergency into a community undertaking.

It is a fitting place to begin her story.

Across decades of newspaper coverage, Mrs. Keys appears wherever something needed doing. Organizing women. Challenging discrimination. Directing singers. Encouraging children. Addressing voters. Leading the NAACP. Building fraternal organizations. Preaching from the pulpit.

Her name traveled through the social columns, church announcements, political pages, and convention reports of the Upper Ohio Valley. Follow those appearances long enough, and a remarkable public life emerges.

At the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, we have been recovering the histories of the institutions that sustained Black Wheeling. Emma Keys helps us see the person moving between them—the woman carrying experience, confidence, and a formidable voice from one gathering to the next.

A Woman Whose Community Crossed City Lines

The newspaper record places Emma Keys in Power, Short Creek, Windsor Heights, and Wellsburg at different points in her life. Her activities carried her into Wheeling, across the Ohio River, throughout West Virginia, and onto national platforms.

That geography matters.

Black Wheeling belonged to a larger network of communities connected by employment, family, churches, schools, and organizations. A church program in Wellsburg could draw singers from Power and soloists from Wheeling. An NAACP gathering on Chapline Street could bring together representatives from Martins Ferry and Bellaire. A woman living outside Wheeling’s municipal boundaries could help lead one of its most important civil rights organizations.

Emma Keys moved comfortably through that world.

Her story expands our understanding of where Wheeling’s Black leadership came from and how far its influence extended. The city was an important gathering place, but the work flowed along the river and through the surrounding communities.

And Emma’s name kept appearing along the route.

Before the National Titles, There Was the Organizing

By the 1930s, Keys was already a visible public figure.

Church announcements identified her as a featured speaker for Women’s Day observances. Political reports placed her among the organizers mobilizing Black Republican voters. In October 1936, she and Mary Cox were named as the women in charge of a Republican rally at the Elks hall in Power.

These small notices deserve a second look.

A rally requires people to arrange the meeting, spread the word, secure speakers, and persuade neighbors that attending is worth their time. The newspaper might devote only a few lines to the result. Behind those lines lay the work of people whose standing in the community made a gathering possible.

Keys was becoming one of those people.

By October 1938, the Wheeling Intelligencer gave her political views a substantial article of their own, under a headline announcing that Mrs. Emma Keys urged Black voters to “Stand and Be Men.”

The language belonged to its era. The force behind it belonged unmistakably to Emma.

“He Wants a Showdown and a Chance”

The 1938 interview preserved something especially valuable: her own voice.

Keys was a committed Republican and a sharp critic of the political and economic conditions around her. She spoke about unemployment, taxation, government power, and the humiliations of dependence during the Depression.

Her argument could be fierce:

“A real Republican negro does not want promises all the time, he wants a showdown and a chance.”

She wanted candidates who would think independently, reject racial prejudice, and stand firm when circumstances became difficult. She had little patience for political figures who could be purchased or voters who surrendered their judgment.

Her insistence on economic opportunity was equally direct:

“A real man wants work,” Mrs. Keys continued. “Give him work and he will take care of the security side of the question. A better living is due all mankind and it is up to you to make it possible.”

These were the words of a woman who expected to participate in public debate.

Her Republican allegiance belongs to the political landscape of the 1930s and 1940s. It also belongs to her individual story. Preserving her history means allowing her to speak with the convictions she actually held.

In 1944, the Intelligencer reported another assignment: Keys had been appointed to organize Young Republican clubs in her district of West Virginia. The accompanying photograph gave readers a face to place beside the familiar name.

She was recruiting the next generation into civic life—and expecting them to have something to say.

Taking the Helm of Wheeling’s NAACP

By 1947, Emma Keys was president of the Wheeling branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

That fact alone should secure her a place in the city’s civil rights history.

Our research into Harry H. Jones’s “Along the Color Line” columns has repeatedly demonstrated how much Black Wheeling’s public life depended upon organized, persistent advocacy. Jones’s reporting also preserves Keys at the center of that work.

In February 1947, he reported that the Wheeling NAACP’s executive committee supported proposed fair employment practices legislation in the West Virginia Legislature. The branch urged organizations and individuals to contact their delegates and senators in favor of the measures.

The issue was access to work: the right to earn a living without being excluded because of race, religion, national origin, or other discriminatory barriers.

Working alongside Keys were secretary Mary Sweed and executive committee chairman Thomas O. Brown. A June report also identified Bessie Graves as treasurer and Brown as vice president.

These names give the movement its human shape.

Civil rights work required officers who kept records, collected memberships, followed legislation, arranged meetings, and maintained pressure after the excitement of a rally had passed. Emma Keys helped lead that machinery.

The woman who had demanded “a showdown and a chance” in 1938 was now helping press for legislation intended to make employment opportunity more than a promise.

A Familiar Name in Our Recreation Story

One June 1947 column offers an especially meaningful connection to the Foundation’s ongoing research.

Reviewing the Wheeling NAACP’s recent activities, Jones reported that the branch had actively supported the successful 1946 campaign for a $75,000 bond issue for a Black recreation center.

There is Emma Keys’s organization, standing within the story we have been following through Handlan Playground and Wheeling’s efforts to provide recreation for Black residents.

The same account described the branch’s assistance with employment, its efforts against job discrimination, and its sponsorship of local Black Boy Scout troops. It also noted public meetings intended to encourage shared thinking and action.

That breadth is revealing.

A recreation center, a job, a Scout troop, and an employment law might occupy different newspaper columns. In community life, they were closely connected. Each concerned the opportunities available to Black families and the future being prepared for their children.

Keys’s leadership belonged to that larger undertaking.

Earlier coverage had already placed her on the program of a 1945 NAACP gathering at Wheeling’s Blue Triangle YWCA branch. Representatives from Wheeling, Martins Ferry, and Bellaire were scheduled to participate. Her subject was straightforward: the “Function of the NAACP.”

She could explain the organization’s purpose from a platform. Her subsequent work demonstrated it in practice.

Building an Elks Network, Temple by Temple

The Black Elks provided another major arena for her leadership.

Within the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World and its women’s organization, Keys rose from local work to state leadership and eventually to one of the highest offices available to women in the international order.

A 1961 newspaper profile credited her with organizing Temple No. 635 at Power in 1934 and reported that she had served as state president since 1939.

The intervening clippings show what that leadership involved.

In December 1941, the Intelligencer announced plans to induct forty candidates into the newly formed Guiding Light Temple No. 735 of Triadelphia. Keys, identified as West Virginia state deputy and president, had organized the temple.

The announcement named the women preparing to lead it: Susie Evans as Daughter Ruler, Willie Simms as vice Daughter Ruler, Clemmie Green as assistant, Kathleen Cook as chaplain, Lucinda Dixon as financial secretary, and Leverta Marshall as recorder, among others.

An organization was taking shape through named women accepting defined responsibilities.

Keys helped make that possible.

A 1943 report placed her at the head of the Pride of West Virginia Council of Past Daughter Rulers. The council’s officers included women responsible for finances, records, religious observance, and the practical conduct of its affairs.

These structures created opportunities for Black women to exercise authority, manage resources, speak publicly, and build enduring relationships across communities.

For Emma Keys, the local temple was a starting point for an increasingly expansive field of service.

The Scale Mabel Hull Saw

Our familiar Mabel M. Hull understood the significance of Keys’s work.

In December 1950, Hull reported that Keys had received an appointment as grand assistant directress of the Grand Temple Chorus of the national Elks organization.

Then Hull supplied a remarkable accounting of her organizing activity.

She credited Keys with involvement in promoting:

• Twenty-three active temples.

• Three Past Daughter Rulers’ councils.

• Twelve Purple Cross nursing units.

• Three Junior Temples.

That is an extraordinary record to find tucked into a newspaper column.

It reveals the reach behind the titles. Temples brought women together. Councils sustained experienced leadership. Nursing units organized service. Junior Temples connected the order to younger participants.

Readers of our Purple Cross Nurses research will recognize another important intersection here. Keys helped develop the organizational world in which those women served.

Hull’s reporting allows us to see Black women’s leadership operating at a substantial scale, through institutions that extended well beyond a single neighborhood.

It also reminds us why her columns are such a treasure. Mabel preserved the accomplishments of women whose work might otherwise survive only as a name on a program—or disappear altogether.

From the Ohio Valley to an International Office

In September 1961, the News-Register announced that Mrs. Emma Keys of Wellsburg had been elected Grand Vice Daughter Ruler at the Elks convention in New York.

The article described it as the second-highest office in the women’s Grand Temple.

It reported that the organization represented 100,000 women across the United States, the Bahamas, Hawaii, the West Indies, Liberia, Ghana, and Canada.

Consider the distance that announcement covered.

A woman familiar to Upper Ohio Valley readers through church programs, political rallies, and local organizational work had become a senior leader in an institution reaching across national boundaries.

During the New York convention, she also served as guest speaker for a large graduating class of Purple Cross Nurses.

Her rise had been visible for years. In 1951, Hull reported invitations for Keys to speak at an Elks Day observance in Wilmington, Delaware, a banquet honoring her there, and a subsequent church engagement in Philadelphia.

These invitations reflected a reputation that traveled.

By 1970, she was still identified as the women’s state president when the West Virginia Elks convention brought delegates to Wheeling’s McLure Hotel.

Decades of service had accumulated around the name the Valley had long known: Mrs. Emma Keys.

She Could Lead a Chorus, Too

Public speaking was only one use Emma made of her voice.

She was also a musician, teacher, organist, and chorus director.

Hull reported that Keys had received her education in Ohio and had taught music in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. At the time of the 1950 profile, she belonged to New Bethel Methodist Church at Short Creek and served as its organist.

Other notices allow us to hear the larger musical life around her.

In 1945, a thirty-voice community chorus from Power, directed by Keys, was announced for an Easter service at Mount Olivet Baptist Church.

In November 1946, the Intelligencer advertised a Power Community Chorus concert in Wellsburg featuring religious songs and spirituals. Guest participants included the Rev. J. S. Percy of Charlestown, along with soloists Anna Belle Knight Williams of Wheeling and Richard Nichols of Wellsburg.

The report noted that the singers had already served churches throughout the district.

Imagine that circuit of congregations and familiar faces: singers arriving from another river community, a guest soloist taking a place at the front, neighbors gathering to listen, and Mrs. Keys bringing the voices together.

Music strengthened the same relationships upon which her other work depended. It filled churches, enriched community programs, and brought people into shared purpose.

Her appointment to the national Elks chorus gave this part of her service a wider stage.

The Reverend Mrs. Emma Keys

As the years passed, another title appeared beside her name.

The Reverend Mrs. Emma Keys.

By 1961, the newspaper identified her as an ordained Methodist minister. Later reports placed her as associate pastor of Henderson Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wellsburg.

Her ministry adds an important dimension to the record.

The familiar speaker at Women’s Day programs had become a minister serving a congregation. Newspaper notices placed her at funerals, missionary gatherings, and religious observances. Her public life included the intimate responsibilities of accompanying families through grief.

In September 1966, she was identified as president of the West Virginia Conference missionary branch during the AME annual conference at Wayman Church in Wheeling.

She helped lead a program that brought together missionary representatives from across the state, with Mrs. Madge Deverreaux of Wheeling among the participating leaders.

By September 1970, a report identified Keys as host pastor at Allen Chapel AME Church in Clarksburg during another annual conference.

Her ministry had carried her farther into West Virginia, while keeping her connected to the church networks of the Ohio Valley.

It is a striking progression to follow through newspaper pages: Mrs. Keys the organizer, Mrs. Keys the state president, Mrs. Keys the civil rights leader—and the Rev. Mrs. Keys, entrusted with a pulpit.

Keeping Faith With the Girls

Emma’s work also brought her into the lives of young people.

In May 1950, Mabel B. Campbell’s Girl Scout troop in Moundsville held a Mother-Daughter tea and investiture ceremony. The newspaper described the troop as the first Black Girl Scout troop organized in the county.

Emma Keys was the guest speaker.

Her subject was “Keeping Faith With the Good,” with the accompanying theme “Mothers Are Rainbows.”

Around her were the girls and women whose names we have been recovering through the Foundation’s research: Campbell, the troop’s organizer and leader, along with young Scouts including Barbara Ann Johnson, Patricia Walker, Ellamae Scales, Wanda Walters, Mary Elizabeth Scales, Thelma Scales, and Kathryn Walters.

Here was leadership becoming visible to children.

The girls participating in the ceremony could see a Black woman whose public responsibilities reached far beyond the room. They could hear her speak and encounter an example of the authority women in their own communities exercised.

A 1963 profile widened that picture further. It identified Keys as a member of the National Council of Negro Women, a former district president in a federated women’s club organization, and a participant in the Wilberforce University Student Assistance Plan serving African students under AME auspices.

Her concern for opportunity extended from a local Girl Scout ceremony to educational work with international connections.

When Three Remarkable Women Shared a Program

One small 1952 announcement brings together three women whose histories have become increasingly important to our Foundation.

The Harmonica Research Club planned a Thanksgiving program at Wayman AME Church.

Emma Keys would deliver a talk on club organization.

Mabel B. Campbell would serve as mistress of ceremonies.

Mary Sweed was chairman.

And Mabel M. Hull reported it.

For a reader hurrying through the Sunday newspaper, it might have been another community announcement. For us, it is a glimpse of a remarkable network.

These women knew one another’s work. They appeared together, organized together, and relied upon one another’s abilities. Their individual biographies intersected in the ordinary business of keeping a community active.

Recovering one woman’s history helps restore the others.

Emma Keys’s story is richer because Hull recorded it. Campbell’s story gains another dimension when she appears beside Keys. Sweed emerges repeatedly as an essential organizer whose work linked programs, memberships, and civil rights activity.

The archive is beginning to give us back the room.

Returning to the Boy Who Needed Blood

All these offices and affiliations help explain what happened when Johnny Lee Waitts needed assistance in 1950.

Keys had relationships she could call upon.

The Elks had members across the Northern Panhandle. Newman could approach lodges. Taylor could mobilize Post 89. Keys could connect the child’s circumstances to an existing child welfare responsibility and help develop a response.

The newspaper described plans to obtain blood for Johnny while building a resource for other children whose families could not afford it.

The surviving article captures that effort in formation: people gathering, appeals being made, cooperation being sought.

It also reveals the practical value of the organizational world Emma helped sustain. Those meetings, offices, and memberships could become a means of answering a family’s urgent need.

At the center of the photograph stood a woman who knew how to get people working together.

A Proud Mother in “OUR Newspaper”

Then, unexpectedly, the clippings give us a quieter Emma.

In January 1967, the News-Register reported her reaction to a feature about actor Greg Morris.

Morris was her son-in-law. His wife, Leona, was Emma’s daughter and a graduate of Wheeling’s Lincoln High School.

Keys explained that she had followed his career and read other stories about him. Seeing him in the hometown newspaper brought a different feeling:

“But when I saw his picture and a story in OUR newspaper, I couldn’t help but cry.”

The emphasis on “OUR” appeared in the newspaper itself.

What a lovely detail to preserve.

The national Elks officer, NAACP leader, minister, and experienced public speaker was also a mother overwhelmed by pride when her family appeared in the local paper.

Other clippings had already shown her family life. A December 1943 notice recorded a gathering at her Power home for her sons, Sgt. Paul B. Henderson and Pfc. William Henderson, before they returned to their military assignments.

She lived the same mixture of public responsibility and private concern familiar to the people she served: children away from home, family accomplishments, church obligations, and neighbors needing assistance.

That small declaration—“OUR newspaper”—carries a sense of belonging that reaches beyond the article itself.

This was her community’s paper. These were her people. Their lives deserved to be seen there.

Bringing Emma Back Into View

The Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation began this research with a familiar experience: a name recurring often enough to demand attention.

Mrs. Emma Keys.

At first, she might seem to belong to one particular story—the Elks, perhaps, or a church program. Then another clipping places her at the NAACP. Another reveals her political voice. Another gives us a chorus, a Girl Scout ceremony, a national appointment, a pulpit, a child needing blood.

Together, those fragments reveal a woman who helped sustain the public life of Black Wheeling and the Upper Ohio Valley.

Her accomplishments also deepen stories we are already telling. The recreation center had advocates. The nursing units had organizers. The girls had women to address them. The civil rights branch had officers who carried its work forward.

Emma Keys stood among the people making those institutions function.

Her life reminds us how much history can hide inside the word volunteer. There were skills behind that service: persuasion, administration, teaching, musical ability, political judgment, and the confidence to assume responsibility when responsibility was needed.

We are glad to bring her name forward again.

And somewhere within this remarkable record, the woman who cried when her family appeared in “OUR newspaper” gives us a particularly fitting reason to do so.

Now it is her turn.

-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

• Political organizing and public commentary: The Wheeling Intelligencer, October 29, 1936, “Colored G.O.P. Women to Rally at Power”; October 11, 1938, “Mrs. Emma Keys Urges Colored Voters to ‘Stand and Be Men’”; and September 14, 1944, “Mrs. Keys Is GOP Chairman.” These document her organizing, political views, and Young Republican assignment.

• NAACP participation and leadership: Wheeling News-Register, July 29, 1945, “Wheeling NAACP To Meet Monday”; Harry H. Jones, “Along the Color Line,” February 16, 1947, “Wheeling Branch NAACP To Support FEPC Bills in W. Va. Legislature”; and June 22, 1947, “Wheeling’s NAACP Opened Membership Drive on June 15.” The June column also reports the branch’s support for the 1946 recreation-center bond campaign, employment assistance, and Black Boy Scout troops.

• Local and state Elks organizing: The Wheeling Intelligencer, December 17, 1941, “Elks Daughters Meet at Power,” concerning Guiding Light Temple No. 735; and April 17, 1943, “Elks Auxiliary Dinner Party,” concerning the Pride of West Virginia Council of Past Daughter Rulers.

• Mabel Hull’s account of Keys’s organizational and musical accomplishments: Wheeling News-Register, December 10, 1950, column by Mabel M. Hull, subsection “Music Directress.”

• National speaking invitations: Wheeling News-Register, February 18, 1951, Mabel M. Hull’s column, subsection “Mrs. Emma Keys Honored,” reporting scheduled engagements in Wilmington and Philadelphia.

• Election to international Elks office: Wheeling News-Register, September 17, 1961, Part III, page 9, “Named to High IBPOE Office.” The article identifies her as Grand Vice Daughter Ruler, describes the organization’s reported international membership, and records her Purple Cross Nurses speaking engagement and ministerial status.

• Music and community performance: The Wheeling Intelligencer, November 4, 1946, page 5, “Power Chorus Gives Concert,” identifying Keys as director and naming participating artists. Additional Easter and church-program notices in the collection document her continuing musical activity.

• Girl Scouts and Mabel B. Campbell: Wheeling News-Register, May 17, 1950, “Tea, Investiture Honor Mothers of Troop No. 15,” documenting the Moundsville troop, participants, and Keys’s address.

• Women’s community networks: Wheeling News-Register, November 23, 1952, Mabel M. Hull’s column, subsection “Holiday Program,” naming Keys, Campbell, and Sweed in the Harmonica Research Club’s Thanksgiving program.

• Ministry, women’s organizations, and educational service: Wheeling News-Register, August 30, 1963, “Women’s Day At Pilgrim Rest Church”; and September 15, 1966, “Missionary Parade Set By Delegates.”

• Later pastoral service: The Wheeling Intelligencer, September 25, 1970, “Weirton Pastor Set to Return For 10th Year,” identifying the Rev. Mrs. Emma Keys as host pastor at Allen Chapel AME Church in Clarksburg.

• Children’s blood-bank campaign: Jean Bendsley, Wheeling News-Register, September 19, 1950, page 2, “Call for Aid Answered in Blood! Bank Set Up to Save Waitts Lad,” with accompanying photograph.

• Family life: The Wheeling Intelligencer, December 11, 1943, page 2, “Power Soldiers Return to Duty”; and Wheeling News-Register, January 22, 1967, Part I, page 19, “Off the Cuff of the Roving Reporters,” concerning daughter Leona, son-in-law Greg Morris, and Keys’s reaction to his newspaper feature.