Mary Camper Redd

MARY CORNELIA NIXON CAMPER REDD, better known as “Mary Lou,” was delivered by her own father, Dr. John E.T. Camper on July 13, 1925 in Baltimore, Maryland. Although she lost her mother, Louise G. Nixon, at the age of 10, she was blessed with another in the person of Florine Thompson Camper, whom she fondly called “Mama Bear.” In the Camper household, during the Great Depression, Mary Lou grew up with little money but lots of love and five siblings — John, Ellen, Beth, Nicky and Jean. An “A” student, Mary Lou graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1942 and Coppin Teachers’ College in 1946. She used to boast that Coppin occupied the third floor of an elementary school but produced the best teachers in the state. However, at that time, the University of Maryland did not admit African American students, so the state of Maryland paid for Mary Lou to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania. As she spent summer weekdays in Philadelphia taking classes, she discovered a “home away from home” on the weekends with Ruth Ealy and her family in Pleasantville, New Jersey. After earning an M.S. in Education in 1951, she continued her graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a Certificate in Advanced Study in Education in 1966, qualifying for induction into a prestigious honor society. While Mary Lou was expanding her education, she was also expanding her family. Having married Rudolph J. Redd in 1948, she gave birth to three children: a daughter lost at birth, a son, Rudy Jr., and another daughter, Teresa. Even after Mary Lou and Rudolph Sr. divorced in 1973, she continued to “partner” with him to act in the best interests of each child. Like her namesake in the Roman legend “Cornelia’s Jewels,” she treasured her children. As Mary Lou worked hard to raise her children, she also worked tirelessly for the good of other children in Baltimore City. “Victory is the product of work,” she wrote in her high school yearbook, and she stayed true to that motto throughout her career. For more than thirty years, she served at numerous elementary schools in the Baltimore City Public School System as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and administrator. She established a reading center at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, where she took in fourth and fifth grade students who had been told they would never learn to read — and turned them into readers. Eventually, she was promoted to Assistant Principal of the Lexington Terrace School, where she forged a life-long friendship with Principal Henry West and his daughters, Deneen and Darcelle. Later, she “grandmothered” their children, Jay, Dannielle, Ashley and Nicholas. When she was transferred to Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, she was, at first, reluctant to leave Lexington Terrace. But, while she worked in Highlandtown, she changed the very tone and thinking of the staff and community members in that all-white working-class district.

Tributes

Mary Camper Redd

February 13, 1925 - August 17, 2013