Names Behind the Numbers: Black West Virginia and Wheeling in 1921–1922
Updated: 17 hours ago
In 1922, the newly established West Virginia Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics published its first annual report. Across more than one hundred pages, the document attempted to describe Black life throughout the state—population, education, employment, business ownership, public service, churches, social organizations, health, housing, and military participation.
The language and assumptions of the report reflect the Jim Crow era in which it was written. Yet within its statistics and directories, something invaluable survives: the names of Black West Virginians who built careers, institutions, businesses, schools, and networks of care despite segregation and discrimination.
For Wheeling and Ohio County, the report offers an especially meaningful snapshot of a community that was comparatively small in number but rich in professional achievement and civic leadership.
A Black population reshaping West Virginia
According to figures reproduced from the 1920 United States Census, West Virginia had 86,345 Black residents—47,129 men and 39,216 women. They represented 5.9 percent of the state’s population.[1]
That population had grown dramatically:
17,980 in 1870
25,886 in 1880
32,690 in 1890
43,499 in 1900
64,173 in 1910
86,345 in 1920
In fifty years, West Virginia’s Black population had increased by approximately 380 percent. Much of that growth was connected to migration. The report estimated that more than 60 percent of the state’s Black residents had been born elsewhere, particularly in Virginia and other Southern states.[2]
West Virginia therefore occupied an important place within the broader movement of Black families away from the agricultural South. They came seeking wages and new possibilities in coal mining, railroads, manufacturing, domestic service, commerce, and the professions.
The opportunities were real, but they were limited by segregation, dangerous working conditions, unequal public services, and racial barriers that followed Black migrants into their new communities.
Coal dominated the economic picture. The report counted 20,781 Black mine workers in 31 counties and stated that more than three-fourths of the state’s Black male wage earners worked in coal mining. Approximately 67 percent of the entire Black population lived in eight mining counties: McDowell, Fayette, Kanawha, Raleigh, Mercer, Logan, Mingo, and Wyoming.[3]
But the report also documents a much broader Black West Virginia—one of teachers, physicians, dentists, lawyers, ministers, merchants, skilled tradespeople, public officials, journalists, and community organizers.
Education under segregation
West Virginia’s Black schools operated within a legally segregated system. Nevertheless, Black families and educators treated education as an essential pathway toward opportunity and independence.
The report recorded 10,103 of the state’s 11,399 Black children between ages seven and thirteen as attending school—approximately 88.6 percent. Attendance fell sharply among older students: about 38 percent of those ages sixteen and seventeen and fewer than 10 percent of those ages eighteen through twenty were enrolled.[4]
Those declining figures raise questions about the economic pressures placed upon young Black people. Many likely had to work, support their families, travel long distances to reach a school, or confront the limited availability of secondary education. The report provides the totals but cannot tell us every individual reason.
There was progress in literacy. The reported illiteracy rate among Black West Virginians age ten and older declined from 20.3 percent in 1910 to 15.3 percent in 1920.[5] That change represents the work of thousands of students, parents, teachers, churches, and community leaders operating within an unequal system.
By the 1921–1922 school year, the state reported:
293 one-room Black schools
132 Black schools with two or more rooms
23 junior high schools
19 classified high schools
641 elementary teachers
84 high-school teachers and principals
Only six Black high schools received the state’s “first-class” designation. Lincoln High School in Wheeling was one of them.[6]
That designation placed Lincoln among a small group of institutions carrying the highest level of accredited secondary education then available to Black students in West Virginia.
Wheeling at the center of Black Ohio County
The 1920 Census counted 1,663 Black residents in Ohio County. Of those residents, 1,623 lived in Wheeling.[7]
In other words, approximately 97.6 percent of Ohio County’s Black population was concentrated in the city.
Local measure | Reported figure |
Black residents of Ohio County | 1,663 |
Black residents of Wheeling | 1,623 |
Share of the county’s Black population living in Wheeling | 97.6% |
Black Ohio County residents age 21 or older | 1,218 |
Reported Ohio County illiteracy rate, age 10 and older | 6.6% |
Black mine workers in Ohio County | 93 |
Black World War I registrants in Ohio County | 621 |
Among West Virginia cities with more than 25,000 residents, Wheeling had the fourth-largest Black population, following Charleston, Huntington, and Clarksburg.
Ohio County’s reported Black illiteracy rate of 6.6 percent was less than half the statewide rate of 15.3 percent. The report does not explain the difference, so it should not be attributed to any one institution or circumstance. Still, when considered alongside Lincoln High School’s first-class status, it suggests a community with a substantial commitment to education.
A notable community of medical professionals
The report’s statewide directories contain 47 physician entries, one of which was marked deceased, along with 13 dentists, eight pharmacists, and 22 lawyers. These were documented listings rather than a guarantee that every professional in the state had been counted.[8]
For Wheeling’s Black population of just over 1,600 people, the directory identified four physicians:
Dr. K. J. Pronty
Dr. E. S. Kennedy
Dr. G. A. Banks
Dr. W. A. Wright
It also identified one dentist:
Dr. M. A. Morrison
These five names represent a remarkable professional presence. Becoming a physician or dentist required extensive education, financial resources, licensing, and perseverance. For African Americans in the early twentieth century, those demands were compounded by exclusion from many colleges, professional associations, hospitals, and opportunities for advanced training.
Their names remind us that Wheeling’s Black community was not defined solely by the restrictions placed upon it. It included highly trained professionals who cared for patients, supported families, served as role models, and demonstrated what education could make possible.
The report also described attorney E. J. Graham Jr. as a Wheeling lawyer when Governor John J. Cornwell appointed him to a three-member Black commission assisting the state in selecting a site for an institution intended to serve Black patients.[9] A later directory in the same report places Graham in Charleston, which may reflect a move or differing compilation dates. The discrepancy remains an invitation for further research.
Leadership beyond professional titles
Some of the report’s most compelling Wheeling stories appear outside its formal professional directories.
William Turner was listed as a Wheeling policeman—the only Black municipal officer identified for Ohio County.[10] Charles Williams appeared in the report’s mail-service directory as a clerk in Wheeling. Harry H. Jones was named secretary of the Wheeling branch of the NAACP, headquartered at 68 Eleventh Street. The Reverend C. M. McGee served as presiding elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Wheeling District.
The report also noted that a highly skilled Black plumber operated his own business in Wheeling. Unfortunately, it did not preserve his name. That omission is itself instructive: historical records sometimes document that a person existed while withholding the very detail descendants most want to recover.
One of the most moving local accounts concerns Mrs. Mary McQuinn.
At 47 Tenth Street, Mrs. McQuinn operated a day nursery for children whose mothers worked outside the home. She began the service independently, without the backing of an organization. The report said that she provided sanitary surroundings and meals appropriate for the children’s ages.
After more than a year, her work began receiving wider public attention and support. The Bureau described hers as the only Black day nursery of which it was aware anywhere in West Virginia.[11]
Long before childcare became a widely discussed public policy issue, Mary McQuinn recognized what working families needed and acted. Her nursery was not merely a business. It was part of the community infrastructure that allowed Black mothers to work while knowing their children were cared for.
Service in wartime and at home
The report’s World War I appendix counted 621 Black military registrants in Ohio County. It also named local residents involved in wartime civic organization.
Charles W. Williams of Wheeling served on a statewide Auxiliary Advisory Council of Defense. Ohio County’s Black Council of Defense was led by C. C. Johns as chairman and Earl Jones as secretary.[12]
These names reveal another form of service: Black citizens participating in the defense and civic life of a nation that had not yet granted them equal treatment. Like the Lincoln alumni who later served in the world wars, they carried obligations to their country while continuing to face discrimination within it.
Progress measured in institutions
The Bureau’s report did not portray Black West Virginians merely as workers. It documented institution-building.
According to the Bureau’s own accounting, its land-ownership campaign helped 107 Black residents acquire tracts ranging from ten to sixty acres. Another 187 people purchased 237 residential lots. The combined reported cost of those properties was $104,216.[13]
The report also cataloged Black-owned corporations, newspapers, churches, fraternal organizations, hospitals, businesses, and welfare programs. These institutions pooled resources, provided care, circulated news, offered employment, paid benefits to widows and families, and created places where Black West Virginians could exercise leadership.
That wider record matters. It challenges any history that depicts African Americans only as victims of the era. Black West Virginians confronted powerful systems of inequality, but they also organized, educated, healed, worshiped, invested, published, served, and built.
Reading the report with care
This publication is invaluable, but it is not neutral.
Its authors worked with a small staff and limited funding and acknowledged that some information was incomplete. Its conclusions sometimes employed paternalistic assumptions, blamed individuals for conditions produced by structural inequality, or presented racial “harmony” without fully confronting segregation and discrimination.
For those reasons, its statistics should be treated as documented findings rather than perfect measurements. Its directories may omit people. Occupational categories may be inconsistent. Even a person’s city of residence may differ between sections.
Yet critical reading does not diminish the report’s importance. It helps us use it responsibly.
The document preserved names that might otherwise have disappeared from the public record: K. J. Pronty, E. S. Kennedy, G. A. Banks, W. A. Wright, M. A. Morrison, William Turner, Harry H. Jones, C. M. McGee, Charles Williams, E. J. Graham Jr., Mary McQuinn, and many more.
Each name is a doorway.
Behind every statistic was a household. Behind every professional listing was a demanding educational journey. Behind every school, church, nursery, association, and business were people who believed that their community deserved something stronger than the limits imposed upon it.
A century later, our responsibility is to keep opening those doors—to find the photographs, family stories, newspaper accounts, professional records, and descendants that can restore fuller lives to the names.
The report counted a community. Our work today is to remember one.
-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.
Source and research notes
The principal source for this article is:
T. Edward Hill, The Negro in West Virginia: Report of T. Edward Hill, Director, Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics of the State of West Virginia, to Governor Ephraim F. Morgan, 1921–1922 (Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1922), HathiTrust Digital Library.
Specific sections cited:
State population and demographic tables, pp. 11–16.
Migration and population discussion, pp. 12–14.
Coal-mining employment, pp. 54–56.
School attendance and education, pp. 24–27.
Illiteracy tables, p. 26.
Classification of Black schools, p. 27.
Ohio County and Wheeling population tables, pp. 15–16.
Physicians, dentists, and pharmacists, pp. 21–22; lawyers, p. 77.
E. J. Graham Jr. and the state commission, p. 70; lawyers directory, p. 77.
Municipal officers, p. 66; mail-service employees, p. 68; churches and welfare organizations, pp. 78–82; skilled occupations, pp. 85–86.
Mary McQuinn’s Wheeling day nursery, p. 82.
World War I registration and defense organizations, pp. 97–102.
Farm and home ownership, pp. 38–41.
Percentages calculated for this article—including Wheeling’s 97.6 percent share of Ohio County’s Black population and the age-group attendance rates—were derived from the report’s published figures and rounded to the nearest tenth.
