Betty Campbell: Statue of Wales' first black head teacher in Cardiff

Betty Campbell MBE was Wales' first black headteacher

A statue to honour a teacher named Betty Campbell, has been revealed in Cardiff.

Betty was a black history campaigner and also Wales' first black head teacher.

The monument is thought to be the first statue of a real-life woman - that's not a character from a book or story - in an outdoor public space in Wales.

More about Betty

Betty Campbell, who was an only child, with parents Simon and Nora Johnson

Rachel Elizabeth Campbell - known as Betty, was born in 1934 in Cardiff's docklands area to a Jamaican father and Welsh Barbadian mother.

Growing up, Betty's father was killed during the Second World War and her mother struggled to earn money.

Despite the family's difficulties, Betty won a scholarship to Cardiff's Lady Margaret High School for Girls.

But it was during her time at school that she was told that a working-class black girl could never succeed.

"When I was in form three of high school I told the head mistress that I wanted to be a teacher," Betty said, speaking in 2016.

"I'll never forget her saying 'oh my dear, the problems would be insurmountable'," suggesting that her chances of becoming a teacher were impossible.

"Those are the words she used. I went back to my desk and I cried. That was the first time I ever cried in school.

"It made me more determined; I was going to be a teacher by hook or by crook."

After becoming a mother at the age of 17, Betty eventually signed up for teacher training in 1960.

"I had my first three children within three years but I'd never given up my dream of being a teacher," she said.

"[My mother] said 'don't be so soft. You've got three kids. How are you going to do that?' I said 'Mamma, I want to be one of them.'"

She went for an interview and was offered a job working as a teacher in deprived multi-racial areas of Wales, first in Llanrumney and then at her local Mount Stuart Primary School, in Cardiff where she eventually became the head teacher.

"I always felt that black people weren't getting their fair share from society," she said.

"I had ambitions of running my own school. People would have said it was all pie-in-the-sky but I thought 'no, I'll have a go'."

'Wales has shown that this black woman truly matters to us all'

Betty Campbell taught at Mount Stuart in Butetown for 28 years

Throughout her life, Betty promoted Wales' multicultural heritage, and put black culture on the curriculum at her school.

She died aged 82 in 2017 and was later chosen as the subject of the new statue by thousands of people who voted for her in a BBC Wales poll.

Professor Uzo Iwobi, Founder of Race Council Cymru, said: "Wales has shown that this black woman truly matters to us all".

UK statues

A UK-wide survey of statues, carried out in 2018, found that just one in five statues in Britain were of women, with most of fictional characters or unnamed figures.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, it was found that there were no statues of any named individual of black heritage in outdoor public spaces in Wales.

On Wednesday 29 September, Betty's statue will become the first, as it's unveiled in Central Square, in Cardiff.

The monument was due to be revealed last year, but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.