BBG Profiles Ancella Radford Bickley: The Library She Left Us

She spent her life making sure West Virginia’s Black history was counted as West Virginia’s history.

In his speech to the 1961 UNESCO General Convention, Malian writer, historian, and ethnologist, Amadou Hampâté Bâ noted, “I consider the death of each of these traditionalists as the burning of an unexploited cultural fund.” He was expressing the gravitas of the African proverb, “In Africa, when an elder dies, a library burns down.” 

He could have easily been describing Ancella Radford Bickley. 

Educator, historian and writer Ancella Radford Bickley died on February 16, 2026. In her time on earth, Dr. Bickley created a body of work that certainly qualified her to be a cultural fund or library as one who documented West Virginia’s Black history. A history she felt should receive its rightful appointment as West Virginia’s and America’s history. 

Born in 1930, she experienced a version of West Virginia that observed segregation and demeaning separationist practices that dictated the schools she attended as well as her access to public libraries. Her West Virginia born father Willard Radford and Jamaican mother Lillian Angus Radford shielded her and her brothers from the harsh realities of racism. 

Born in 1930, Ancella experienced a version of West Virginia that observed segregation and demeaning segregationist practices that dictated the schools she attended as well as her access to public libraries.

In a 1994 interview with Bill Drennen, host of Cultural Conversations, Bickley recalled a childhood in Huntington that was somewhat rural and idyllic. A part of Huntington that hadn’t been urbanized. Her paternal grandmother churned her own butter, tended to her own livestock and garden. She told Drennen she wasn’t particularly carefree as a child in a setting where children could run through the grass, climb trees and ride bikes up and down the road. Instead she preferred to read everything she could get her hands on. 

But she also mentioned that she began working as a maid at 12 years old. In subsequent interviews, Dr. Bickley mentioned working as a maid right after she received her undergraduate degree from West Virginia State College, now West Virginia State University in 1950. She also married Nelson R. Bickley, Jr. the same year, and took on the role of military spouse, following him to Savannah, GA and several stops in-between, including Frankfurt, Germany until returning to West Virginia as he served in Korea. In 1954, she earned a master’s degree in English from Marshall University in Huntington, WV, where she was Marshall’s first full time Black student; all the while raising the couple’s two daughters Renee and Ancella Jr. Twenty years later she received an Ed.D. in English from West Virginia University (1974).

In 1979, she authored History of the West Virginia State Teachers’ Association, which was published by the National Education Association. 

According to her obituary, “Once Nelson retired and the family became stationary, Ancella’s career blossomed. She moved from a faculty member at West Virginia University, to a faculty member at West Virginia State College, to Vice President and Provost at West Virginia State College.

“After retirement from college life, Ancella then went on to a second career as historian, specializing in West Virginia black history.” 

Dr. Bickley possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of West Virginia’s Black history. With Joe William Trotter, Jr., she co-edited Honoring Our Past: Proceedings of the First Two Conferences on West Virginia’s Black History for the Alliance for the Collection, Preservation and Dissemination of West Virginia’s Black History in 1991. In 1997, she authored Our Mount Vernons: Historic Register Listings of Sites Significant to the Black History of West Virginia for the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation. In Spite of Obstacles: a History of the West Virginia Schools for the Colored Deaf and Blind 1926-1955 was published in 2001 for the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts. 

If, perhaps, Dr. Bickley had a literary magnum opus it be her work as the co-editor (with Lynda Ann Ewen)  of Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman (Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia) published by Ohio University Press in 2001. Noted historian and scholar William H. Turner endorsed the book. He wrote, “One of the first books to show how Appalachian blacks—like those in the Cotton Belt South and the Northern migrants—successfully pitted their intellect against historical realities and contradiction, and won!” The Memphis Tennessee Garrison book is considered a seminal work as it centers a Black woman from West Virginia as important to the state’s history as well as Appalachian history. 

An ardent researcher, Dr. Bickley would also contribute to The West Virginia Encyclopedia Online as an author of multiple profiles of both Black notables and historic places. 

One of the many things that makes her work extraordinary is that she made a concerted effort to include Black women in West Virginia’s diverse history. She felt that women like aviator Rose Agnes Rolls Cousins and physician Mildred Mitchell-Bateman deserved to have their stories told. 

Bickley wrote about them all. However, there were other men and women that interested her most, and we would call them “unsung,” while she would herald them as everyday Black heroes and sheroes, especially those she described as “builders of human beings” in their communities. The “builders of human beings” were her favorites because they reflected her family, the village of elders she witnessed helping others as a child, and maybe even herself. 

The Ancella Bickley, Historian, Research Papers regarding African-Americans Collection can be found at the West Virginia and Regional History Center located at West Virginia University. According to the scope and content:  “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.” 

Ancella Radford Bickley, daughter of West Virginia, lover and preserver of Black West Virginia and Appalachia history, was also an integral part of history. 

That’s the part of her story she couldn’t tell though we can.