Elizabeth P. Campbell Papers
Collection
0086-MMC-NPBA
The Elizabeth P. Campbell papers cover the years 1953 to 1993 with bulk dates of 1953 to 1976. The collection documents Campbell's time with Greater Washington Educational Television Association (GWETA). The majority of the collection consists of minutes of the GWETA Executive Committee and Board of Trustees. The collection also contains a history of GWETA and an audio cassette of Campbell's ninetieth birthday celebration.
This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection. This collection contains audiovisual materials. Items that cannot be used in the Special Collections reading room or are too fragile for researchers require that a digital copy be made prior to use. If you would like to access these materials, please contact us prior to your visit.
Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy. Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder. Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is proected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a research find sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.
1 Linear Feet (2 letter-size boxes)
3 Items (1 VHS, 1 U-Matic, 1 audio cassette)
English
Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell was the founder of the Greater Washington Educational Television Association (GWETA). Campbell was born on December 4, 1902, in Clemmons, North Carolina. Campbell's background was as an educator. She served as a dean of the Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia before her election to the school board of Arlington, Virginia in 1947. She served several terms on the school board during which time she advocated African-American and handicapped education alongside her husband, the civil rights lawyer Edmund D. Campbell.
Campbell was elected president of GWETA in 1957. The following year, GWETA broadcast its first educational television program on WTTG, Time for Science. In 1961, WETA established a public television station on channel 26. As Campbell stated during the introductory WETA broadcast, "This station, WETA, can be your teacher. Languages, mathematics, science, history, music, art: an unlimited number of subjects can be offered for all ages, from preschool children to mature men and women." During Campbell's leadership, WETA continually increased its amount of programming and expanded into public radio at frequency 90.9. In 1967, WETA introduced their long running, PBS distributed program Washington Week in Review.
Campbell led WETA until 1971, when she relinquished the presidency and become vice president of community affairs. She provided her services to WETA without pay for four decades and continued to come to work into her nineties. In 1996, Campbell received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Ralph Lowell Award. Several universities including Washington and Lee awarded her honorary doctorates. Elizabeth Campbell died on January 9, 2004.
This collection is arranged in two series in chronological order: Series 1. Greater Washington Educational Television Association Organization Files, 1953-1976 Series 2. Audio Visual Materials, 1982-1993.
The papers of Elizabeth P. Campbell were received by the University of Maryland Libraries in a series of two donations between 1991 and 1995. The materials were described in preliminary inventories upon their receipt.
In 2012, the materials were arranged into two series based on their individual donation groups and rehoused according to the original order in which they were received by the donor. An exception was made for a number of books that were removed from the collection, and the audio visual materials which was seperated and re-arranged into a separate series. In 2017, the two series of paper materials were combined into one series to more accurately reflect the central topic they cumulatively document: Elizabeth Campbell's interaction with GWETA.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives