WOOSTER Virginia Blackwell wanted to be a teacher and she wanted to be a teacher in her hometown. The opportunity finally arrived in 1963, almost 20 years after Blackwell earned her degree from West Virginia State College, an all-Black school at that time. Wooster City Schools hired her as a special education teacher, making her the first Black teacher in the district’s history. “She was just glad she got to teach… She didn’t look at it as a fight but her right,” said Carolyn Huff of her mother, who died on March 3. She was 98. Virginia Blackwell's early years Blackwell was born on March 29, 1922, in Wooster. She graduated from Wooster High School in 1940 and earned a degree in music education with a minor in history from West Virginia State College in 1944.