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A Brief History of Wheeling’s Blessed Martin School

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Dedication

We are sharing this post again in honor of our beloved Sister Gabriella Wagner, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 102.

She was a lovely, kind soul who treasured her time at Blessed Martin and all of the schools at which she taught. Sister was a dedicated, generous teacher, and I was privileged to have been one of her thousands of students. I am honored to have had the opportunity to interview her for this post just after her 102nd birthday. A clip from that interview appears in the story below.

Rest easy in the light, Sister Gabriella. You shall be missed, even as your legacy lives on in all of us who benefited from your patient counsel.

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Many of those with even a passing familiarity with Wheeling’s history will easily identify Lincoln School as the segregated public school in town from Reconstruction through “Jim Crow” to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education.

But many of those same people have probably never heard of Wheeling’s segregated Catholic school, Blessed Martin.

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Who Was Blessed Martin?

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Saint Martin de Porres Velázquez (1579 – 1639) was born in Peru in 1579 to a Spanish man and a freed Panamanian slave of African or Native American descent. Martin faced relentless prejudice throughout his life, including from the Church he loved, because he was of mixed-race. He graciously and tirelessly persevered, finally becoming a brother of the Dominican order.

Appropriately for our troubled times, “Blessed Martin” is now the patron saint of public health workers (he was trained in the “medical arts”), mixed-race people, and all those seeking racial harmony. Himself a trained barber, Saint Martin is also the patron of barbers and innkeepers. Because he considered all work to be sacred, Martin was also known as the “Saint of the Broom.” As a health care worker, Martin did not discriminate, caring for everyone from nobleman to slave.

Known as a friend of animals, Martin was said to have exhibited the gifts of aerial flight, bilocation, and miraculous cures. He was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. His feast day is November 3.

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A “Rugged Beginning”

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“Climb through the rocks — be rugged.” ~ Blessed Martin’s School Motto

In 1954, the same year as the Brown decision, Sister Anne Patricia Whalen, the principal at Blessed Martin School delivered an address to the Wheeling Sierra Club, the text of which, now housed in the Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, provides a general outline of the history of the school from her perspective.

The first segregated Catholic School for black students in West Virginia was actually St. Peter Claver, a part of the tiny parish of the same name established in Huntington in 1939. St. Peter Claver, a Spaniard and abolitionist Jesuit who ministered to slaves arriving by ship in Cartagena (modern Colombia), is known as the “Patron Saint of Negro Missions.” Students were taught in two small rooms above the church by the Pallottine Missionary Sisters. The school closed in 1964.

Wheeling’s Blessed Martin school was established in August 1942 during Bishop John J. Swint’s tenure and, according to Sister Anne Patricia, against the wishes of many vocal citizens in both the white and black communities.

Apparently due to this struggle, the school was “opened three times and closed twice.” On the first attempt, the enrollment was too low. On the second attempt, it was thought that fear of persecution kept students away. According to the Wheeling News-Register in a 1971 article printed before Blessed Martin’s first reunion, parents were displeased that the school was only to be comprised of grades one through six.

Then a delegation of six older women and one man from the local Catholic African American community asked to speak with Bishop Swint, who in turn invited Mother Magdalen, Superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph to join the meeting with these elders.

According to Sister Anne Patricia’s second hand account from Mother Magdalen, “one poor old soul was wearing an apron, which she continually used to wipe away the tears.” Others cried as well. “They were in total oblivion of everything except their firm belief in their cause.” The Bishop was moved enough by this emotional plea to promise to open the school for grades one through eight if the elders could deliver a few students for each grade the next morning. They did, and Blessed Martin de Porres School opened officially on the third day, with sixteen boys and twenty-three girls (the annual report lists 21 girls, see below), with the first four grades in one tiny room and the upper four in an even smaller room in a house (the “former Old Lady’s Home,” according to an August 20, 1942 announcement letter signed by Mother Magdalen) located on the northeast corner of 13th and Jacob Streets, where Wheeling Central’s gymnasium sits now. The physical layout featured the “Same setup as Lincoln School — Sports on one side, history and picture of school in the middle, classrooms, etc. on other side.”

“I dare to say,” Sister Anne Patricia asserted, “that few schools can boast of such a rugged beginning.”

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A First Class Rating

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“Blessed Martin, Holy Patron
who upon the throne doth see
face to face the God who made us
and who died for such as we.
Be our guide, our inspiration
at his feet present our plea
for the grace to love and serve Him
ever and most faithfully
so that we one day may worship
Christ our Lord in Heaven with Thee.” ~School Song

Despite continued resentment (the Sisters resorted to sneaking to school in the alley behind Masonic Temple to avoid angry neighbors) Blessed Martin steadily grew its student body with 43 students enrolling for the second year.

Blessed Martin’s first First Communion class included Gloria Dennis, Gwendolyn Campbell, and Catherine and Robert Huff, who received the sacrament from Rev. Yahn at St. Joseph’s Cathedral on May 16, 1943.

As the enrollment continued to grow, “the duties of the school were entrusted to Monsignor Edmund J. Yahn…” the school’s Spiritual Guide, who, in addition to retrieving boys from the police station, also “pleaded cases of justice to help our boys get a fair deal and spent many mornings in the juvenile court to protect the interest of a few of our wayward students.”

This is a rather jarring passage to read in the context of a very brief 1954 speech outlining the history of a small parochial grade school in 1942. It’s not something you would expect a Catholic nun to say about a white school from that same period. The fact that Sister Patricia felt compelled to include it is telling, and says something about the historic relationship between the African American community and the police in Wheeling.

Grades 9 through 12 were added in the third year (1944), and Blessed Martin became a high school as the Second World War came to an end. By 1954, the school boasted six graduating high school classes (first in 1948), 125 total students (without soliciting any, as Sister Anne Patricia points out), a “first-class rating” from the state board of education, and  a menu of “Academic, Commercial, and Home Economic courses.” According to newspaper reports, in 1948, representatives of the state board of education from Charleston gave Blessed Martin a Class A rating.

Dorthy Daniels Jackson became the first student to graduate from Blessed Martin, having attended all 12 years of her primary and high school education.

Blessed Martin’s first graduating high school class included seven students: Norman E. Campbell, Theodora May Cooper, William A. Galloway, Albert A. Gentry, Launbural Spriggs, Wanda Elaine Lyle, and Wiley Walker.

In May 1948, ten full scholarships to formally all white Catholic universities were awarded nationwide to African American graduates of Catholic high schools. Three of the ten went to Wheeling’s Blessed Martin honor students, including Galloway (Notre Dame); Spriggs (Duquesne); and Campbell (DePaul) (“Catholic Scholarships for Negroes, Inc. of Springfield Mass”).

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Mission

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In May 19, 1946, Harry H. Jones, one of Wheeling’s only African American attorneys, who ten years previously had delivered a speech about segregation called “Wheeling’s Twentieth Man” on WWVA Radio, wrote a column titled, “Along the Color Line – Progress of Catholic Church Among Negroes in the United States.” In it, he wrote, “In West Virginia, under the leadership of the Most Reverend John J. Swint, Bishop of the Diocese, the Catholic Church has made considerable progress among Negroes. Many members of the race have joined the church and the program in their behalf has been expanded. This is noticeable here in Wheeling. In September 1942, the Blessed Martin’s School for Negro boys and girls was opened here. The school has ten grades taught by six teachers in a commodious building at 13th and Jacob Streets; 81 pupils are enrolled. The school has extra curricular activities such as athletics, Girl Scouts, and a live Parent-Teacher Association.”

Jones went on to cite a letter from Bishop Swint that listed three black Catholic churches in the state at the time: one each in Bluefield, Huntington, and Bristol.

The number of African American Catholics in Wheeling in the 1940s and 1950s was quite small. According to the 1952 Catholic Almanac, there were only 70,000 in the entire nation, which works out to one in 37 of the entire Black population being Catholic. The point is that few of the 125 students at Blessed Martin were Catholic, and since the “propagation of the faith to non-Catholics” was a prominent part of the stated mission of the Church in its work with African Americans (and certainly not unique to that population), the effort was made to “convert” black children at Blessed Martin.

“No pressure is put on any student to become Catholic,” Sister Anne Patricia assured readers, yet “we have had consistently a few conversions each year.”

At the 1971 reunion, Sister Anne Patricia recalled Bishop Swint’s two objectives:

“One, to promote the religious welfare of black Catholics in Wheeling. And two, to promote the Catholic faith among non-Catholic blacks.”

According to Mother Magdalen’s 1942 announcement letter, “no undue influence will be exerted to make Catholics of them [non-Catholic children] and no child will ever be received into the Catholic Church without the consent of the parents.” Yet, a financial incentive existed as Catholic students attended for free while non-Catholics were charged fifty cents per child, per month.

Though students were encouraged to continue to attend whatever church they belonged to, the idea was to plant the seed of Catholic doctrines in the hearts of students, with the belief that such seeds would take root and blossom in time. This, in the end, was the driving force behind Blessed Martin’s existence.

Understood in that way, Blessed Martin was more or less a mission school.

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Faculty & Academics

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Blessed Martin faculty included Sister Anne Patricia (Principal), Sr. Gabriella Wagner, Sr. Angelina Cavellero, and Sr. Mary Florence. Mrs. Lucy Cooper Busby, who taught Home Economics, was the only African American and the only secular teacher. Sister Mary Thomas served as “Informant.” In 1947, Mrs. Dorothy Cooper was president of the Blessed Martin PTA.

The curriculum included typing, bookkeeping, arts. Some chemistry classes were taken at Wheeling Central, although in segregated classes.

According to Sister Gabriella Wagner, interviewed shortly after her 102nd birthday, when a 9th grade was added to Blessed Martin in 1944, the curriculum included Latin, French, Business, and Home Economics. Folk dancing was taught along with physical education.

Also according to Sister Gabriella, the first through 6th grade classrooms were on the first floor, and 7th through 12th grades were upstairs. First and second were in one room, 3rd, 4th and 5th in another, and 7th and 8th in another.

“The first year,” she recalled, “I had Algebra and first and second grade. Imagine that combination. I taught the little ones, and then I went upstairs for Algebra with the freshmen and sophomores.”

Sister Gabriella remembers the beautiful life sized statue of Blessed Martin that stood in the front hall when you entered the school. Like the rest of us, however, she doesn’t know where the gift from the Dominican Fathers of NYC is now. If you have any clues, dear reader, please advise.

The author interviews Sr. Gabriela Wagner by video, July 27, 2020.

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Full list of Blessed Martin faculty, culled from Annual School Reports housed in the diocesan archives with classes taught where available:

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• Sister Celestine (Theresa) Anderson (English, French, and Latin)
• Sister M. Angelina Cavallaro
• Sister M. Barbara
• Sister Bertha
• Miss Barbara Blazek (Shorthand and Typing)
• Sister Borgia (English)
• Miss Mary Byron (Postulant)
• Sister Claudia McMahon
• Miss Coles (Algebra I, Algebra II, Social Studies)
• Miss Lucy Cooper (Home Ec.)
• Sister Damien (Berenice) Burkle
• Sister de Lellis (Regina) Manley (Biology)
• Miss Louise DeMauri (Shorthand, Algebra I, French)
• Sister Demetria (Mary) Roos (History)
• Sister M. Eleanor (Laura) Grottendeick (Religion and Typing, 1st and 2nd grades from 1944 – 1947)
• Sister Marie Michelle Maureen (Feeney)
• Sister Irma Arkle (Math)
• Sister Mary Jude (Patricia) Jochum
• Sister Juliana Kellerman (Science)
• Sister Mary Grace Madeleine (Rita Marie) Lawley
• Sister M. Louise (Nellie) Donahie (Home Ec.)
• Sister Marcelline (Margaret) Bell (Latin) (Taught 9th & 10th grade Latin from 1953-54)
• Sister Phillip Marie (Irene) Giannotti
• Sister Sheila Marie (Julia) Flanagan (Science, Social Studies, French) (Taught third, fourth, and fifth grades from 1948-49)
• Sister Rosemary McCahon
• Miss Patricia McGonical (Postulant)
• Sister Placide (Catherine) Lawless (Special and Part Time Faculty, History, Sociology, French)
• Sister Agnes Regina (Verena) Roth (Science, Chemistry, Math)
• Sister Sarita (Mary Jane) Ball
• Miss Spainhour (Chemistry)
• Sister Mary Immaculate Spires (Home Ec., Civics)
• Sister M. Teresa Fleckenstein
• Sister Francis Xavier (Patricia) Terneus
• Sister Gabriella (Angela) Wagner (Math, Science) (Taught grades 1 and 2 Algebra from 1950-52 and Math, Biology, Religion, and English from 1953-55)
• Sister Anne Patricia Whalen (School Principal, Spelling, Religion, Commercial, 1942 – 1955)[Edits and updates provided by Jon-Erik Gilot, Archivist of the Diocese, Feb. 10, 2021]

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Full list of students by year, culled from Annual School Reports housed in the diocesan archives:

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• 1942: 37 elementary students (16 boys and 21 girls)
• 1943: 47 elementary students (22 boys and 25 girls)
• 1944: 68 elementary students (38 boys and 30 girls)
  1944: 8 high school (9th grade) students (5 boys and 3 girls)
• 1945: 64 elementary students (35 boys and 29 girls)
  1945: 21 high school (9th and 10th grade) students (12 boys and 9 girls)
• 1946: 79 elementary students (35 boys and 34 girls)
  1946: 27 high school students (9th, 19th, and 11th grades) (16 boys and 11 girls)
• 1947: 67 elementary students (36 boys and 31 girls)
  1947: 33 high school students (17 boys and 16 girls)
• 1948: 72 elementary students (40 boys and 32 girls)
  1948: 30 high school students (13 boys and 17 girls)
• 1949: 69 elementary students (34 boys and 35 girls)
  1949: 31 high school students (17 boys and 14 girls)
• 1950: 73 elementary students (37 boys and 36 girls)
  1950: 28 high school students (12 boys and 16 girls)
• 1951: 82 elementary students (34 boys and 48 girls)
  1951: 33 high school students (17 boys and 16 girls)
• 1952: 78 elementary students (30 boys, 48 girls)
  1952: High school record missing.
• 1953: Elementary school record missing
  1953: 27 high school students (13 boys, 14 girls)
• 1954: 95 elementary students (42 boys, 53 girls)
  1954: High school record missing

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Social & Extracurricular Activities

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Social activities at Blessed Martin were typically Catholic in nature and included Sodality, various types of charitable outreach, and teen dances.

Extracurricular often involved the same activities typical for Caucasian schools.

During the Second World War, for example, Blessed Martin took fourth place in a waste paper drive in February 1944. The 47 students collected 3,330 pounds of waste paper, an average of 70 lbs per student. A quota of 16 1/2 lbs per students had been set for all participating schools, with a goal of 206, 772 total lbs of waste paper, which had been designated “the country’s No.1 critical material” for the war effort used in the production of everything from Army ration containers to signal flares and recruiting posters. A trophy from the Ohio Valley Salvage Committee was awarded to the winning school, Ohio County Vocational at 81 lbs per student.

Blessed Martin offered one of the first Girl Scout Troops (Troop 60) for African American girls in Wheeling.

On June 9, 1949, Camp Maynor, “the day camp for Negro Girl Scouts opened at Wolfe playground near Lincoln high school…under the direction of Mrs. Martha Spriggs.” The event featured cookouts, games, crafts, singing, story telling, and dramatics. Gwendolyn Campbell was named “Cookie Queen” for record sales of cookies. Troop 60 from Blessed Martin School was awarded a plaque for best troop record in cookie sales. Awards were presented for things like “good grooming.”

Blessed Martin students were frequently called upon to provide the entertainment for interracial school-related activities. At an April 22, 1949 Ohio County teachers Association meeting at Clay School, for example, Lincoln and Blessed Martin students taught by M. E. Fassig, performed a “number of dance specialties.”

On April 29, 1950, freshmen students Robert Boyd and Gloria Dennis were named Blessed Martin’s King and Queen. There was a procession in Central’s gym, a choir of 6th through 8th graders sang, as did the glee club, and third-5th graders danced an Irish reel. The pageant was another fundraising effort for the athletic department. See below.

In December 1950, 15 year-old Blessed Martin sophomore Gloria L. Dennis, a student of Miss Lucy Cooper, tied for first place representing West Virginia in a national design and sewing contest. Seven thousand high schools nationwide were represented in the “Young Designer’s Contest.” Ms. Dennis’s winning design was a plaid cotton robe.

In November 1950, when the Hagers, an African American family of eight, lost their home to a fire, students of Lincoln and Blessed Martin, led by the Rendezvous Club of the Negro Recreation center, attended a dance at the center, with can goods as the admission, to collect food for the needy, especially the Hagers.

In April 1952, Blessed Martin partnered with Saint Joseph’s Academy (Wheeling’s Catholic school for white girls) to presentand sponsor a play called “Our Lady of Fatima” at the Fedo Theatre (the black theatre located in the black Pythian Building on Chapline Street).

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Sports

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Needless to say, Blessed Martin was a small school with a microscopic budget. Expensive sports like football were, therefore, not feasible. In fact, we know that athletes like Wheeling Hall of Famer William Burrus left Blessed Martin for Lincoln School in order to play football and other sports.

But Blessed Martin did, after a rocky start, eventually excel at basketball. Sister Gabriella remembers student athletes practicing in the yard behind the school. “And white people came and played with them after school…It very much integrated them at that time, in the playground…The students didn’t mind if they were white or black, as long as they could play ball.”

In one of the first reports in the local newspaper about their program, Blessed Martin, led by coach William Dennis and dressed in the school colors of green and white while sporting the unexpected moniker, “The Fighting Irish,” lost to the Bridgeport Colored Recreation Center basketball team, 35-19 on Jan. 30, 1947.

A year later on January 1, 1948, the Intelligencer reported: “Blessed Martin Catholic high, a newcomer to the sports world, broke into print via its first basketball team. Although the team didn’t fare to well as far as the record book goes, it did give a good account of itself  in the fields of teamwork, sportsmanship, and determination.”

Funding was a big issue and money for equipment and travel was primarily raised through student-led campaigns such as the one reported on Sept. 24, 1949, when “Students of the Blessed Martin school are sorely in need of athletic equipment for the coming year,” so students asked for donations while “stationed at various corners” downtown. In September, 1951, Blessed Martin students held a “Tag Day” to raise money for their extensive basketball travel expenses as, “attendance at Blessed Martin’s home games has not been great enough to carry on the general athletic program.”

In his regular column dated January 31, 1950, Intelligencer sports write Tony Maestle lamented Blessed Martin’s ongoing funding issues for road basketball games despite a healthy 6-1 record in their third season. “The athletic department,” Maestle wrote, “is attempting to gain admittance into the W.Va. Negro scholastic conference; the state Negro tournament and also to open an athletic series with Lincoln School of Wheeling.”

“I believe that Lincoln and Blessed Martin athletic teams,” Maestle continued, “no matter what sports they compete in, should receive the backing of sports fans, as they play a major role in the future of the kids forming the teams and the youngsters attending those schools…the kids learn that good comes out of good sportsmanship and team work. Basketball is a recreation for the boys of Lincoln and Blessed Martin highs, and unless they receive the support of the fans there may come a time when the schools will have to drop the sport.”

Indeed, while on the grade school level, integrated play seems to have been the norm for basketball (Blessed Martin regularly played St. Michael’s and other white parochial schools, for example), high school level competition was strictly segregated in the state and required extensive travel for the three northern panhandle schools. Other black schools frequently finding themselves on Blessed Martin’s basketball schedule included: Clarksburg Kelly-Miller, Don Bosco, Elkins Riverside, Fairmont Dunbar, Morgantown Monongalia, Parkersburg Sumner, Piedmont Howard, Weirton Dunbar. The Blessed Martin team also typically played an alumni squad to fill out the schedule.

In March 4, 1950, Maestle lauded both Blessed Martin and Lincoln as the “travellingest basketball teams” in the state. Those two and Weirton Dunbar were the only “Negro” teams in the northern panhandle, so the home and home schedule required a lot of travel south, with all three squads traveling more than 1100 combined miles that season. Lincoln would add 320 additional miles to play in the state’s Negro tournament at West Virginia State College at Institute. “The United States Navy’s standby is ‘Join the Navy and see the world,” Maestle commented, “but Lincoln high’s coach J.W. Kinney and Cleve Mason [the new head coach as of 1949] of Blessed Martin say ‘Play basketball at Lincoln and Blessed Martin and see the State of West Virginia.'”

On March 6, 1953, Lincoln and Blessed Martin played each other in basketball for the first time in the Section 1 Championship game of the West Virginia State Negro high school tournament. Lincoln prevailed 47-40. Both teams advanced to the regional finals.

On March 5, 1954, Wheeling had the honor hosting the West Virginia Athletic Union’s Section A basketball tournament at Wheeling Central’s gym, with Blessed Martin serving as the “host” school. The four-team tournament included defending champion Lincoln, Blessed Martin, Parkersburg Sumner, and Weirton Dunbar.

It’s worth noting that, attached to Principal Anne Patricia Whelan’s 1954 school history is the following uncredited notation: “Prior to integration, Blessed Martin played against Paden City (white) High School. The first black v. white game to be played in the State, BMHS won the state championship. The second black v. white [game] was played at Cameron High School in Cameron WV.”

According to Bob Barnett’s book, The Black Athlete in West Virginia, the first integrated basketball game in West Virginia was actually Huntington St Joe vs Huntington Douglass, played in 1948.

While the game against Paden City could not be verified by research, the Dec. 11, 1954 Intelligencer did confirm Blessed Martin’s victory over all-white Cameron, 79-59 at Cameron. Ron Strouthers scored 29 points, while Bruce Saunders added 23. The day before, the newspaper had called the matchup the “Northern Pandhandle’s first inter-racial game…”

Interestingly, at the 1977 reunion, Mnsgr. Yahn, who drove the team to the games, had a different recollection. “The first white school thta gave us a game was Cameron,” he recalled. “We lost by two points. On the way home we were kidding about why we lost. Tom Walker explained that he played poorly because he was hungry and lighter than usual.”

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Desegregation & Closure

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According to the September 1, 1954 Intelligencer, even after the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which held that “separate but equal” (ie, segregated) educational facilities for racial minorities were inherently unequal, therefore violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — meaning they were unconstitutional and had to be phased out — and even as enrollment at Lincoln School and Dunbar (the segregated public schools in Ohio County), decreased dramatically, Blessed Martin’s enrollment remained the same in 1954 as it was in 1953–120 students.

In the wake of Brown, the Ohio County School Board had voted to “postpone integration until next year (1955), and Superintendent J.P. McHenry said, ‘most Negro families appeared to be adhering to the board’s request…'” But a subsequent article was headlined, “3 Local Schools Enroll 12 Negroes…,” in which McHenry said, “They showed up and we accepted them…” Six boys and three girls (including Ann Thomas) were accepted into Wheeling High School, one girl was accepted at Triadelphia High School, and two boys at McKinley Vocational High school.

In a brief history entitled, “Resume of the History of Blessed Martin School, Wheeling, West Virginia, 1942 -1955” from the Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph, the unidentified author wrote, “In 1955 it was thought best to follow the injunction of the Supreme Court and permit the 150 students enrolled to be integrated in the public and private schools of the area. Good moral habits had been taught and respect for God and humanity were stressed.”

The last class at Blessed Martin High School graduated in June 1955. Many, but not all, of the remaining students were enrolled in Cathedral Grade school or Wheeling Central Catholic High School. “In announcing the closing of the school yesterday, the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Edmund J. Yahn said that as many of the Blessed Martin students as possible will be absorbed into Central and Cathedral grade schools. Monsignor Yahn said that he’d “like to take care of them all” but overcrowded conditions in the two schools make it impossible.

The last graduation speech was delivered by valedictorian Johnny Galloway.

Interviewed by the Intelligencer in 2015, Ralph Edwards. Sr., noted that he “and two of his Blessed Martin classmates – James Mayfield and John Galloway – walked through the doors of Wheeling Central Catholic High School as the first black students to attend the school.” No African American girls attended St. Joseph’s Academy (the girls’ Catholic high school associated with Central) that first year after the Brown decision.

“The nuns at Blessed Martin were great. And the Marist Brothers at Central had a profound effect on the rest of my life. Later, when I entered the Army, I wasn’t afraid to take orders. I was used to that with the brothers,” Edwards quipped. A guard in basketball, Edwards remembered playing against the white Catholic schools in grade school, boys who would become teammates at Central. “There were some schools that wouldn’t play you because of having blacks on the team,” he told the Intelligencer. Edwards was inducted into the West Virginia All Black Schools Sports and Academic Hall of Fame in 2014.

On May 22, 1956, the Ohio County Board of Education voted to close Lincoln School on June 30. At that point, only Hardy, Cabell, Jefferson, Boone, and Berkley counties in West Virginia still hadn’t closed segregated schools in response to Brown.

That same year, the Intelligencer reported that “277 Negro students are attending one-time segregated schools [43 in high school, and 20 at Wheeling High School].”

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Reunions

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Blessed Martin alumni organized the school’s first reunion in 1971, sixteen years after the doors were closed. Some 140 former students and faculty gathered at Wilson Lodge for the event, which featured a speech by Rt. Rev. Msgr. Edmund Yahn (then pastor of Corpus Christi Church), dinner, and a dance. Organizers included, Lawrence Minor, Shirley King, Rosie Walker, Mae Francis Williams, Mrs. Lee Evans, Ralph Edwards, James Rainbow, Tom Walker, Chester Cruthfield, and Enzie Gentry Calloway. Former principal Sister Anne Patricia described the reunion as being characterized by Love and happiness.”

In August 1977, a second reunion was attended by 120 people, including then Bishop Hodges, Msgr. Yahn, the Sisters, and many former students. The two night event featured a banquet at Glessner Auditorium, followed by a dance at the Civic Center. Sister Anne Patricia was the keynote speaker. The planning committee included Shirley King, Mae Frances Williams,  Norman Campbell, and Lawrence Minoi. Highlights included the group singing of the school song (see above).

 

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We’d like to hear Your Story…

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If you attended Blessed Martin School and open to  to sharing your memories, we would love to speak with you.

Please contact us HERE so that we can make your story a part of our story.

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On January 24, 2023, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and Wheeling Central Catholic High School held a dedication and blessing of a restored statue of St. Martin de Porres to be located in Central’s gymnasium, the former location of Blessed Martin School. Bishop Brennan blessed the statue and a few former students were in attendance. One of them sang the fight song (click to watch).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On February 28, 2023, Lunch With Books at the Ohio County Public Library hosted a program called “Remembering Blessed Martin School.

Watch the entire video of the program HERE.

“There are two things I think about with regard to Blessed Martin de Porres School. One is (and it’s lamentable), that the Church, giving in to human weakness, cooperated with an invidious and insidious segregation system in our country…That’s the sad part. The Church has to always remember: Christ first. The Gospel first. You try to accommodate the culture. But you have to stand up against the culture when it’s wrong. And there were heroic people who were doing that. But they didn’t have the power to change the system. The good side, is that the Catholic Church in this community found a way to educate African American young people, even in a segregated system. They found a way to give them the blessing of a good education.” – Remarks by Bishop Brennan at the 02-28-23 program.

 

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Sources

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• Barnett, B.; Brooks, D.; Althouse, R. The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 Through the End of Segregation. McFarland. 2020.
• Jones. H. H. “Along the Color Line – Progress of Catholic Church Among Negroes in the United States.” ? May 19, 1946.
• “One of First Black Wheeling Central Students Reflects On History.” Wheeling Intelligencer. September 27, 2015. Interviewee: Ralph Edwards, Sr. No attribution.
• “Resume of the History of Blessed Martin School, Wheeling, West Virginia, 1942 -1955.” Paper. Author unknown. Courtesy Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Wheeling, WV.
• Toothman, S. “Blessed Martin – An Era in Education: School’s First Reunion.” Wheeling News-Register. August 29, 1971.
• Toothman, S. “Blessed Martin Alumni Meet at First Reunion.” Wheeling News-Register. August 29, 1971. September 3, 1971. Re-published in The Catholic Spirit.
• The Torch. Blessed Martin Yearbook, 1947-1953. Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
• Wagner, G., Sr. “Black Catholics in West Virginia A minority within a minority.” The Catholic Spirit. Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. Dec. 9, 1992.
• Wagner, G., Sr. Video interview conducted by Sean Duffy on July 27, 2020. One of the last living teachers at Blessed Martin School, Sister Gabriella was 102 years old at the time.
• Whelan, A.P., Sr. “A History of Blessed Martin School.” Talk delivered to the Wheeling Sierra Club in 1954. Courtesy Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
• Wood, P. “Alumni of Blessed Martin Hold Anniversary Reunion.” The Catholic Spirit. September 2, 1977.