Prominent

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Prominent African Americans in West Virginia
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Mildred Mitchell-Bateman The first
African-American woman to head a West Virginia
state government agency
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Mildred Mitchell- Bateman
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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.
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J. R. Clifford Pioneer journalist, lawyer, and
civil rights leader
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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.
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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.
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In the case of Martin v. Board ofEducation, 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.
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John W. Davis President of West Virginia State
College and civil rights leader
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John Warren Davis
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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.
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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.
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During Davis' tenure, West Virginia State became
one of the leading black colleges in the country
in both academics and athletics.
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Martin Delany The highest ranking black officer
in the Union Army during the Civil War
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Martin Delany
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Martin Delany
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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.
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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.
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During the Civil War, Delany served as a
physician and became the first commissioned black
officer in the Union Army.
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Elizabeth Simpson Drewry The first
African-American woman elected to the West
Virginia Legislature
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Elizabeth Simpson Drewry
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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
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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.
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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.
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Henry Louis Gates Jr. Renowned black literary
scholar and chair of Harvard University's
African- American Studies Department
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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.
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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.
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Hal Greer Huntington native and member of the
basketball hall of fame
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Greer's number 15 jersey was retired by the 76ers
and in 1981, he was elected to the Naismith Pro
Basketball Hall of Fame.
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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.
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John C. Norman Jr. Noted thoracic and
cardiovascular surgeon and researcher
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Noted thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon and
researcher John C. Norman Jr. was born May 11,
1930, in Charleston, West Virginia.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Christopher Payne The first black member of the
West Virginia Legislature
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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.
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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.
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Payne was a pioneer in the field of black
journalism and established three newspapers --
the West Virginia Enterprise, The Pioneer, and
the Mountain Eagle.
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In 1896, Payne was elected to the West Virginia
Legislature as a Republican delegate from Fayette
County.
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Samuel W. Starks Local and national leader of
the black Knights of Pythias fraternal order
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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.
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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)
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Leon Sullivan Charleston native and civil rights
leader
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Booker T. Washington Noted educator and first
president of Tuskegee Institute
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Booker T. Washington
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Carter G. Woodson

• widely regarded as the leading writer on black
  history of his time.

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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.
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