Ancella Radford-Bickley

Ancella Radford-Bickley is an author dedicated to the preservation of Black history in West Virginia.

Radford-Bickley grew up in Huntington and graduated from Douglass High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from West Virginia State College and a master’s degree in English from Marshall University, where she was the first full-time, Black student in 1954. In 1974, she earned her Ed.D. degree in English from West Virginia University.

She retired as vice president of academic affairs at West Virginia State University. She is dedicated to the preservation of African-American history in West Virginia.

With Lynda Ann Ewen, she co-edited Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Women and published Our Mount Vernons. Radford-Bickley authored stories and articles for West Virginia’s cultural magazine, Goldenseal. She was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar funded through the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. She also conducted and published interviews at Marshall University for the Oral History of Appalachia Program.

The West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University holds a collection of Radford-Bickley’s papers pertaining to her research, service and family life. The West Virginia State Archives houses a collection of documents gifted to them Radford-Bickley.