- “I never thought I’d live to get this old,” Bertha Adine Pitts Campbell remarked at her 91st birthday celebration. She would go on to add nearly another decade to her eventful life, her death in 1990 marking more than 100 years of excellence as a pioneer, volunteer, historian and activist. Author Pauline S. Hill documents the life of this incredible woman in her revised edition of “Too Young To Be Old: The Story of Bertha Pitts Campbell”.
Born in Winfield, Kan., in 1889, Bertha would go on to become a founder of public service organization Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., which now boasts more than 250,000 predominantly African-American women members; a charter member of Seattle’s Christian Friends for Racial Equality; a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and a local and national leader in the Young Women’s Christian Association. She grew up modestly, raised in Montrose, Colo., by her maternal grandmother, Eliza Butler, who was an ex-slave and “who doted on Bertha because she believed Bertha ‘to be the one!’” Writes Hill:
Grandma Eliza, without any formal education, knew instinctively the
importance of an education. Therefore, while Bertha and she made the
rounds returning the ironing she did to support them to families, Grandma
Eliza made careful mental notes of all the kindergarten classes in the
area. Being the only Black families in Montrose, the Pitts and Grandma
Eliza Butler knew that Bertha had to excel beyond her White counterparts.
And excel she did. Bertha made a name for herself as she matriculated through the Montrose school system, graduating from high school summa cum laude and being named valedictorian. She received a full scholarship to Colorado College but instead chose to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. It was here that Bertha’s eyes were opened to an entirely new world of challenge and possibility.
“Her thirst for knowledge was only surpassed by her thirst for information about and interactions with and among her people whom she was experiencing en masse for the first time in her life,” Hill writes.
“Too Young To Be Old” takes readers on a memorable journey through Bertha’s battles for equality, both for women and African-Americans, and her lifelong devotion to bettering the world through selfless service. It is the tale of a woman who, through hard work, rose from obscurity and lives on indefinitely as a role model for men and women of all races, ages and backgrounds.
Author Pauline S. Hill was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., and is a graduate of Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., the University of South Carolina and Seattle Pacific University. She is a retired teacher, principal and education director and has followed Bertha’s path in a lifetime of service, devoting many volunteer hours to her community and working closely with the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the First African Methodist Church in Seattle, and African-American and Kenyan Women Interconnect (AAKEWO).
