1919-2008
A champion of education and literacy, Dr. Jeremiah Cameron dedicated his life to a teaching career that spanned nearly 50 years.
Cameron was born in the 18th and Highland block of Kansas City’s east side, where he first attended school at Attucks Elementary. He would later attend the Penn School in Westport – a two-room schoolhouse founded in 1868 to educate Black children – where future jazz great Charlie Parker was among his classmates. There, instructors fostered in him a lifelong love of English and reading.
After graduating from Lincoln High School in 1937, Cameron earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Indiana University and was the first African American student elected to the university’s Phi Beta Kappa scholastic fraternity. He continued his education, earning a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Michigan State University.
After a short stint in the U.S. Army, Cameron returned to his hometown to teach at R.T. Coles Vocational School and Lincoln High School. His distinguished career in education also included an adjunct faculty position at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, as well as heading the language and literature department at Penn Valley Community College from 1963 until his retirement in 1989.
Cameron was a passionate civil rights advocate and an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He wrote a regular “N.A.A.C.P. in Action” column for the Kansas City Call and, in 1996, received the Harold L. Holliday Sr. Civil Rights Award for his contributions in fighting discrimination.
He also served as a Kansas City Parks and Recreation board commissioner from 1972 to 1979 – the second African American to hold that position. During his tenure, Cameron advocated for better parks jobs for minorities and increased parks services in the city’s urban core. Shortly before his death in 2008, the Dr. Jeremiah Cameron Park at 43rd and Broadway (the former site of the Penn School) was dedicated in his honor.
Above all, Cameron was a teacher. Although he had no children, his legacy remains with the many students he impacted and inspired. As one of his former students, Leon Dixon, told The Kansas City Star in 2008, “There have been thousands of teachers in Kansas City and hundreds of English teachers, but there was just one Dr. Cameron.”