Ancella Bickley, Historian, Research Papers regarding African-Americans A&M 4208

Ancella Bickley, Historian, Research Papers regarding African-Americans A&M 4208


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West Virginia and Regional History Center

1549 University Ave.
P.O. Box 6069
Morgantown, WV 26506-6069
Business Number: 304-293-3536
wvrhcref@westvirginia.libanswers.com
URL: https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu

Jane LaBarbara

Repository
West Virginia and Regional History Center
Identification
A&M 4208
Title
Ancella Bickley, Historian, Research Papers regarding African-Americans 1775-2018 (Includes facsimiles) 1970-2011
URL:
https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/ark:/99999/209044
Quantity
13.1 Linear Feet, 13 ft. 1/2 in. (9 record cartons, 15 in. each); (3 document cases, 5 in. each); (2 document cases, 2 1/2 in. each); (1 flat storage box, 1 1/2 in.)
Creator
Bickley, Ancella R.
Creator
Wicks-Nelson, Rita, 1933-
Location
West Virginia and Regional History Center / West Virginia University / 1549 University Avenue / P.O. Box 6069 / Morgantown, WV 26506-6069 / Phone: 304-293-3536 / Fax: 304-293-3981 / URL: https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/
Language
English

Administrative Information

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.

Conditions Governing Access

Requires signed form for box 1, folders 8, 16, and 17, since special access restriction applies due to PII.

Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Ancella Bickley, Historian, Research Papers regarding African-Americans, A&M 4208, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.


Biographical Note

Dr. Ancella Radford Bickley, author, historian, and educator, grew up in segregated Huntington, West Virginia, where she was born in 1930. She graduated from Douglass High School in 1947 and went on to attend West Virginia State College, graduating magna cum laude in 1950 with a degree in English. She was the first full time black student at Marshall University and received her master's degree in English in 1954. She received her Ed.D. in English from West Virginia University in 1974. Dr. Bickley was a teacher at all educational levels and was Vice-President for Academic Affairs at West Virginia State College where she retired in 1986. She continued to research, write, and speak from her retirement home in Florida where she lived with her husband Nelson. Some of her accolades include the Mountain State Bar Association's Distinguished Citizen Award, 1978; the National Education Association's The Carter G. Woodson Memorial Award, 1980; West Virginia Woman of the Year, 1984; the West Virginia State College Alumnus of the Year, 1988; and was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar at Marshall University in 1999.

Dr. Bickley was a prolific speaker and in addtion to the speeches, she authored many stories, plays, and articles. In 1997, she published Our Mount Vernons to identify sites significant to West Virginia black history.

With Lynda Ann Ewen, she co-edited Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman , published by Ohio University Press. She has written stories and articles for publications including West Virginia cultural magazine, Goldenseal . She wrote a history of the West Virginia Schools for the Colored Deaf and Blind.

Scope and Contents

This collection documents the research, public service, and life of Ancella Bickley, writer, educator, speaker, and historian. Includes writings, research materials, and more, focusing on the history of African Americans in West Virginia and the black experience in West Virginia. Collected research materials are predominantly facsimiles. Printed formats include correspondence, clippings, interview transcripts, typescript writings, publications, pamphlets, ephemera, speeches, articles, military records, and more. Other formats include photographs, slides, and audiocassettes.

Subjects include Dr. Bickley's writings, which include plays, speeches, and short stories as well as her historical books, articles and other publications; collected materials from Dr. Bickley's historical research on the history of African Americans in West Virginia; and personal papers. Her research materials include papers grouped sometimes by county, sometimes by individual, sometimes by subject. Subjects of her research include slavery, education, churches, biography and genealogy, literature, and more. Specific subjects include the Underground Railroad, James McHenry Jones, genealogy, Carter G. Woodson, Mollie Gabe, West Virginia Colored Institute/West Virginia State College, John W. Davis, black high schools, school integration, and more. Counties and their cities with specific focus include Cabell, Kanawha, and Jefferson. Some documents treating slavery and the Underground Railroad include Ohio from which Cabell County blacks, including Bickley's ancestors, migrated.

Colleagues with whom she corresponded include Judith Stitzel, Nelson Barnett, Maureen Crockett (with whom she co-wrote at least one play), and many more. Of significance is correspondence between Carter G. Woodson and his sister, Bessie Woodson Yancey; and letters and a signed photo from Alex Haley.

Writings, research background, and drafts of Dr. Bickley's works found within the collection include: Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman , "Midwifery in West Virginia" (1990), Honoring our Past: Proceedings of the First Two Conferences on West Virginia's Black History , History of the West Virginia State Teachers' Association (1979), In Spite of Obstacles: a History of the West Virginia Schools for the Colored Deaf and Blind, 1926-1955 , Our Mount Vernons: historic register listings of sites significant to the Black history of West Virginia , a short story collection "Turn Left at the Desert," ... to be black in Fayette , and plays: Two Saint Say , Mother Love , Tangled Threads (with Maureen Crockett), Wade in the Water , and seven Goldenseal articles. Grant applications and other documents pertaining to her work with the Humanities Council of West Virginia are included in the collection. Other documents describe her work with the Kanawha County Board of Education, EcoTheater, Berea College's Black Mountain Youth Leadership program, and various professional organizations. Personal papers include material about her husband Nelson R. Bickley and his military career, diplomas, transcripts, photographs of a party she held, and more.

Addendum of 2017/02/09 (boxes 11 and 12) includes papers of Dr. Ancella R. Bickley, with a few papers of her daughter Ancella Livers. Formats include interview transcripts, correspondence, clippings, typescript writings, publications, cassettes, and more. Most of these materials are transcripts of oral histories pertaining to a collaborative project undertaken by Dr. Bickley and Dr. Rita Wicks-Nelson about black teachers and their memories of school integration in West Virginia in affiliation with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia at Marshall University.

Abbreviations used in the Contents List:
AB - Ancella Bickley
WVSC - West Virginia State College
NB - Nelson Bickley
MTG - Memphis Tennessee Garrison
JMJ - J. McHenry Jones
NEA - National Education Association
NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English
Mo So Lit Club - Matrons and Maids Social and Literary Club, McDowell County, WV
UGRR - Underground Railroad
MU - Marshall University
WVU - West Virginia University
CGW - Carter G. Woodson
RW-N - Rita Wicks-Nelson

Related Material

Bickley, Ancella Collection. Materials relating to African-American history including annual West Virginia Conferences on Black History, 1908-1996. 3 boxes. Ms2003-182, at the West Virginia State Archives.

Marshall University Oral History Collection, Accession Number 1973/01.0064, also includes the oral history transcripts in this collection's addendum of 2017/02/09.

Separated Material

Items not held in the WVRHC collection which were sent to the Rare Books Curator:
1969/70 edition of "The Black Student at WVU"
Bulletin of West Virginia State College, Series 21, no. 1, June 1933. "Why Choose West Virginia State College"
Bickley, A. R., Carter, G. W. M. F. I., & Marshall University, H. W. V. D. A. (1997). Our Mount Vernons: historic register listings of sites significant to the Black history of West Virginia . [Huntington, WV] : [Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation of Huntington and the Drinko Academy at Marshall University].
Booklet, "History of African-American Miners in Appalachian Coal Fields: Black History Month, February, 2000"


Subjects and Indexing Terms


Significant Persons Associated With the Collection

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Significant Places Associated With the Collection

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Container List

Series 1. Awards, Honors
1937–2008
Scope and Contents

Includes civic and academic awards and honors, as well as academic milestones such as graduation and Bickley's dissertation. This series includes materials on the celebration of Bickley's retirement from West Virginia State College.

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Series 2. Family Papers
1928–2013
Scope and Contents

Includes newspaper clippings and writings by Ancella Bickley Livers (also called Cill Jr. or Cill). Also includes material by or about Nelson Bickley, Ancella Bickley's husband and prominent Charleston, West Virginia, lawyer. Formats include articles, awards and honors, military records, speeches, research notes, publications, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and more. Subjects include Nelson Bickley's military and teaching careers, his uncle Carter G. Woodson, and more.

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Series 3. Genealogy
1844–2013
Scope and Contents

Includes genealogical research material, notes, and charts in print as well as handwritten for these families, mostly from the Huntington, West Virginia area and across the Ohio River: Twyman, Spurlock, Barnett, Payne, Jones, Woodson, Wilson, Johnson, Summers, Smoot, Peters, Radford, Layne/Lane, Jones, Straham, Cabell, and Parker. Additional genealogical information is included in oral history interviews with individuals (see Interviews and Oral History Interviews series); the Others' Works series; the Biography subseries of Research Notes and Collected Materials; and other locations throughout the collections.

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Series 4. Interviews and Oral History Interviews
1943–2014
Scope and Contents

This series includes two subseries, General and Black Teachers.

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Series 5. Others' Works
1900–2006
Scope and Contents

Includes books, manuscripts, facsimile pages, and other publications not written by Bickley, who was sometimes asked to provide feedback on writing. Forms of writing include family histories, poems, short stories, plays, novels, and both scholarly and popular articles. Other writers include: Sharon M. Draper, Charles Lloyd, Hannah N. Geffert, Peri Lynne Johnson, L. O'B. Thomson, Nelson L. Barnett, J. McHenry Jones, Judith Stitzel, Elizabeth Taylor Brown, and Phyllis Moore.

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Series 6. Photographs
1901–2012
Scope and Contents

Includes black and white historical photographs, slides, and contemporary color photographs. Additional photographs can be found throughout the collection. Most photos are black and white facsimiles of original historical photos of people and places significant to Bickley's research and publications. Subjects include educational institution buildings and students; other institution buildings; the Radford family; Bickley and Bickley with others. The contemporary color photos include ones of the memorial statues on the West Virginia Capitol grounds; Potomac State College campus; Bickley and others; and the social event A Red Hat Party celebrating women.

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Series 7. Professional and Community Activities
1895–2002
Scope and Contents

Includes examples of Bickley's contribution to a number of public service projects both in a professional capacity and as a citizen. Includes these formats:
planning documents,
correspondence,
meeting notes, and
agendas for these organizations:
-Amistad, Inc., a publishing company she formed;
-West Virginia Humanities Foundation;
-Black Mountain Youth Leadership Program, Berea College;
-The EcoTheater in Lewisburg, for which she served as board member;
-National Council of Teachers of English, for which she was National Director;
-West Virginia Archives and History Commission, of which she was a member; and
-Marshall University colloquium on black history.

Most notable are the grant applications, programs, and correspondence from her work with the West Virginia Humanities Foundation. Bickley was President of the Board of Directors and wrote a ten-year history of the organization, 1974-1984. The files include background materials for a number of projects for which she or others received grants. For her work with the Kanawha County Board of Education, her files include research materials about minority student achievement, and documents about the Kanawha County Schools Minority Student Achievement Task Force and Maximizing Achievement of African-American Children in Kanawha County (MAAACK). Documenting her work with an organizing committee to clean up the Bethel Cemetery in Huntington, her files include calls for participants, flyers, lists of members, and more. One civic activity with no apparent formal organization includes a meeting with Governor Rockefeller to advocate for affirmative action in West Virginia government. More on Bickley's professional and community activities can be found in the Awards, Honors Series.

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Series 8. Research Notes and Collected Materials
1775–2013
Scope and Contents

This series includes eleven subseries which highlight Bickley's research on black history in West Virginia and to a smaller extent black history in general. The subseries include her work on black history for many West Virginia counties with her research being more extensive for Cabell, Jefferson, and Kanawha Counties which have their own subseries. The subseries for Research Notes and Collected Papers are: General, Biography; Cabell County, WV; Jefferson County, WV; Kanawha County, WV; Other WV Counties; Churches, Education; General; Organizations; Slavery; and the Underground Railroad.

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Series 9. Writings
1901–2018
Scope and Contents

Includes manuscripts and publications for books; plays and reenactor monologues; short stories; magazine and scholarly articles; and other forms of writing in both print and handwriting. Five subseries encompass the various genres of her writing. Also includes background and research materials for the subjects for her writings, both fiction and non-fiction.

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