MORGANTOWN – Charlene Marshall wasn’t in possession of a rearview mirror the day she found herself at the Metropolitan Theatre in 1994.
That was OK, though, she said.
All the history she needed was in her head and heart as she looked back.
“I didn’t really say anything at the time,” she recounted to The Dominion Post previously, “but it gave me chills to stand there.”
As a little girl, she could watch movies at the Met, but it had to be from the balcony. That’s how it was then.
On this particular day, now 30 years gone, she was center stage in an official capacity. Then, she was Morgantown’s mayor – and at present, she remains to only woman of color to serve in that role.
She was there to accept a $1 million federal Housing and Development check for the refurbishing of the storied venue that had fallen into ill-repair by then.
First as mayor, and then later as a member of the state House of Delegates she was a consistent champion of home.
“I’ve always talked about the good people of Morgantown and Monongalia County,” she said. “I’ve stood on a lot of shoulders to get where I am.”
The University City’s history of Black achievement in the business community – powerful shoulders of achievement – is being highlighted this month with the help of Main Street Morgantown, the Morgantown Public Library and Aull Center for History.
“Black Entrepreneurs of the 19th and 20th Century in Morgantown, West Virginia” runs through February at the library on Spruce Street.
To take it in means getting a glimpse of academic achievement and entrepreneurial vision, which were milestones even more pronounced, given the societal barriers at the time.
Dr. William Waddell faced two conflicts in World War II.
As a Black American living in a “Whites Only/Coloreds Only” world, he was denied many of the fundamental freedoms for which he was fighting in Italy and North Africa – where he was wounded in heavy combat.
Waddell went into the military as the first licensed Black veterinarian in the state of Pennsylvania, and after the war, he eventually found himself next door in West Virginia, where he opened his own practice in Monongalia County.
Others profiled in the exhibit are John Hunt, who founded a hotel here in the early 1900s and Eddie Dooms, whose restaurants in Morgantown and the region survived and thrived after the Depression.
Matt Miller, a researcher who works with the library, Aull Center and West Virginia University’s state and regional history center, helped compile the exhibit, with project management assistance from Jennie Smith.
Stewart Williams served as graphic designer for the exhibit.
