Pitt alumna, author tells history of BAS and her career

The struggle of the black community at Pitt is storied and ongoing, Bebe Moore Campbell… The struggle of the black community at Pitt is storied and ongoing, Bebe Moore Campbell said on Wednesday.

“For you who came after, I want you to know, we had you in mind,” Campbell said.

Campbell, a novelist and Pitt alumna, spoke about the history of the Black Action Society, her career as a writer and her current passion for educating people about mental illness.

In the second event of BAS’s Black Week, a weeklong program of events to celebrate black history and culture, Campbell described the fight in the late 1960s to force the University to hire more black faculty members and recruit more black students.

“We read [our demands to Chancellor Wesley Posvar] forcefully, proudly,” Campbell said. “And he listened to us.

“We were planning for you.”

Campbell attempted to share with her audience the abilities and perseverance that helped her become a best-selling author.

“Your pride must be born of your own accomplishments,” she said. “No one can give that to you.”

Campbell also told of her humble beginnings as a writer.

“In five years, I could have had enough rejection slips to paper the walls of my apartment,” she said. “[My parents] could pray for me and wish me well, but they couldn’t get me published.”

Originally, Campbell struggled to find acceptance anywhere. Her growing supply of rejection notices weighed her down, until she found support in the form of a workshop comprised of only eight writers.

“The yeses have to drown out the nos,” Campbell said.

With the creation of “Essence,” a magazine geared toward black women, Campbell saw an opportunity open up – and she grabbed it.

“I learned that I had to sell myself,” Campbell said. “Everybody else was a letter; some people might be a phone call. I was going to be a face.”

Campbell’s publications in “Essence,” and subsequently in “The New York Times Magazine,” “The Washington Post,” “The Los Angeles Times,” “Ebony” and “Black Enterprise,” paved the way for her first book, “Successful Women, Angry Men: Backlash in the Two-Career Marriage,” a nonfiction look at the changing dynamics of gender roles in the family.

Campbell concluded her speech by discussing her most recent works, her first play and children’s book, both of which dealt with mental illness.

Campbell read the book, titled “Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry,” to her audience.

“We don’t talk about [mental illness] in the black community,” Campbell whispered sarcastically. “There should be no stigma about mental illness.”

She then explained the steps someone could take to assist a family member or friend suffering with a mental illness.

“My journey from Pitt student to elementary teacher, to writer, to editor has been uphill, downhill, smooth and rugged,” Campbell said. “I’ve struggled, but I keep on climbing.

“For those of you who came after, you’re on your journey now, making memories, shaping your future with each choice that you make. So I challenge you to be bold and wise, to try harder [and] to prepare yourselves,” she said.

“And know that we who came before you are watching you.”