Schools pioneer remembered in Black History Month

With Black History Month upon us, CPC remembers a once-unsung, working-class pioneer, who helped put black history on the agenda - or, more accurately, the curriculum.

Betty Campbell was Wales’ first black headteacher and a true champion of diversity and equality.

Betty had been born in Cardiff’s gritty Butetown area in 1934 and grew up in poverty in its adjacent Tiger Bay, the diverse docklands community that would give the world a certain Ms. Shirley Bassey.

It was a part of Wales' now-capital city filled with different cultures, many uprooted by the upheaval of the First World War and many others attracted by the labour opportunities provided by the docks.

Betty herself was the daughter of a Welsh Barbudan mother and Jamaican father, the latter killed in the torpedoing of the Ocean Vanguard at the height of World War II, when she was still a mere child.

Unsurprisingly, with her tough start in life, she soon turned to reading as a reliable escape route, becoming enamoured with the works of Enid Blyton and her series of popular girls’ school stories.

An enthusiastic learner, Betty would soon turn her fiction into reality, winning a scholarship to attend Cardiff’s Lady Margaret High School for Girls and continue her adventures in education.

However, she was soon dealt a crushing blow, when her new headteacher commented how, as a working-class, black girl, Betty’s goal to become a teacher herself would be beyond her reach.

Told the societal hurdles of the time would be unsurmountable, she was left crestfallen.

"I went back to my desk and I cried.

“That was the first time I ever cried in school”, she remembered.

“But it made me more determined… I was going to be a teacher by hook or by crook”.

Falling pregnant at 17, Betty would have to battle to raise four children of her own.

But to the wider world beyond, her legacy would be most shaped by two pivotal events.

First, she discovered the local Cardiff Teacher Training College had begun to take female students.

This drove Betty to defy the deep-rooted limitations imposed on her race, class and gender and enrol on a teacher training course, becoming the only black student admitted in the 1960 intake.

It was a move that paved the way to the career she coveted, one her world said was beyond her.

Betty became a teacher in the suburb of Llanrumney, but would soon heed the call of the same challenging community she grew up in, taking up the reins at Butetown’s Mount Stuart Primary.

Even in this multiracial area, the one she long called home, Betty sensed scepticism from parents.

“They hadn’t seen a black teacher before”, she recalled.

Nevertheless, as had been a theme of her life, Betty persevered.

Then, came a second life-changing experience, as she made a fateful visit to the United States.

It was there she discovered much about civil rights activists like Harriet Tubman, the courageous American abolitionist, who was born into slavery, only to escape, rescue her family and free many more slaves through her Underground Railroad, a network of anti-slavery activists and safe houses.

Guided by her own learning, Betty brought these tales home and, after rising to the rank of headteacher, unprecedented for a black, Welsh woman, she would integrate their teachings.

At Mount Stuart, she nurtured a school that became a best practice benchmark for equality and multicultural education, educating pupils about slavery, apartheid and the civil rights movement.

From under-covered to uncovered, Betty boldly made black history a part of her own curriculum.

She would devote 28 years to Mount Stuart in total, raising its profile across the United Kingdom.

Her community credentials meanwhile extended beyond the classroom, with years of service on Cardiff Council and a spell on BBC Wales’ board of directors allowing Betty’s insight into the black experience to inform, educate and inspire working adults, as well as the many children she taught.

In 1994, Betty was asked if a "special visitor" could attend Mount Stuart Primary’s St. David’s Day Eisteddfod (their version of the traditional festival, celebrating Wales’ music, poetry and language).

It turned out the visitor was the then-Prince Charles, who later remarked how Betty’s “hard-earned respect” had been “the result of her determination to overcome any and every obstacle she encountered”.

Four years later, Betty formed part of the preparation committee for the opening of the Welsh Assembly (now the Senedd) and met with the mighty Nelson Mandela during the South African President’s one and only visit to Wales, fulfilling a request reportedly made by Mandela himself.

Then, in the new millennium, Betty became an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales Institute, the new identity of the same Cardiff Teacher Training College she had enrolled in all those years ago.

By her death at 82 in 2017, Betty had helped create our Black History Month and she was heralded as an “inspiration to other black and ethnic minority people” by Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones.

Remarkably, her presence would soon return to Cardiff, when she won the BBC’s Hidden Heroines poll, aimed at honouring a named, non-fictional woman with a statue in an outdoor, public place.

A bronze statue by sculptor Eve Shepherd was unveiled in September of 2021, a mere stone’s throw from the Millennium Stadium and a striking focal point among government and media headquarters.

“We know about kings and queens, but we don’t know about the people that stood up against the system and said “Enough. This needs to change””, Shepherd told Cardiff University’s Gair Rhydd newspaper.

Indeed, one can only imagine quite how radical Betty’s integration of different cultures and pasts might have been perceived, as she battled to bring black history from the fringes to the forefront.

Shepherd’s statue is striking as it represents not only Betty herself, but a host of young children who grew up under her learning tree, the branches of which almost come to life via this superb sculpture.

Making black history years after she taught it, The Guardian called Betty “a pioneer and a rule-breaker, an educator, community leader and race relations campaigner who met Mandela and rubbed shoulders with royalty - but always had time to call the bingo numbers at a local event”.

However, the last words as we mark Black History Month should go to Betty Campbell herself:

“When I was a head, I looked at black history, the Caribbean, Africa and slavery and the effects”.

“That was just a junior school, but there were people that said, ‘You should not be teaching that’”.

“Why not? It happened”.

Black History Month runs the entire month of October in the UK and in Ireland.

For information, inspirational words and stories, visit blackhistorymonth.org.uk