Haydee E Campbell

She was an elementary school teacher at a school designated for 'colored pupils' which was located at 1241 South 3rd Street. Named for Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), a French novelist, who is said to have had negro descent. (Report Board Ed. (1929 edition); School Director, (1938/1939).

Mrs. Haydee E. Campbell, nee Benchley a native Texan, was the first African American woman to receive formal kindergarten training under Susan Blow at the St. Louis Kindergarten Training School. In 1882 she became the supervising principal of the kindergartens for African-American children in the St. Louis Public Schools. The philosophy of the kindergarten program was based on the works of Freidrich Froebel (a German educationalist, is best known as the originator of the ‘kindergarten system’), which emphasized the value of play in how children learn. Ms. Campbell, Josephine Silone Yates, and other kindergarten advocates understood that “high-quality kindergarten training was the key to the success of the public kindergarten movement.” In 1896 Campbell became the National Kindergarten Organizer of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) under the leadership of Mary Church Terrell. In Campbell’s first speech, “Why the National Association Should Devise Means for Establishing Kindergartens,” presented at the 1899 NACW Convention, she says:

"The plan of the Kindergarten system has been molded according to the nature of the child, and through it he may be led to a higher state of development of body, mind and soul and a fuller consciousness of this relationship to nature, to this fellow-man and to his God. This is the aim, the vital purpose of the Kindergarten education. The Kindergarten assists the natural growth of the child, developing the good that in him lies and helping him to receive from his environment the good it may contain. As tools to this end, Froebel has given us songs, games, stories, talks, gifts, occupations, lunch and garden work, and these are only tools to be subordinated always to the thought which directs their use." [Info: childrensdefense.org]

For some years past she has resided in St. Louis, Missouri. She distinguished herself by actually going before the school board of St. Louis, as an applicant for the position as principal or instructress for the kindergarten department. Here she was confronted with the task of making the highest average, and leaping the obstacle of white applicants who for so many years have stood in the way. She, with courage undaunted, went into the examination and, to the surprise of the board of examiners, the white applicants and the city of St. Louis, she captured the department with the highest average percentage ever made in St. Louis, for that work. Mrs. Campbell is a tireless worker, and it is never too cold, too wet, for her to do a charitable act. The people of St. Louis love her. She was a student of Oberlin.

Source: Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities," by Monroe Alphus Majors (1893)