Cleophus Charles and Rosa Lee Charles papers

Cleophus ("Cleo") Charles was born in Gould Arkansas on August 6, 1943 to Reuben and Dorcas Charles. He spent his formative years in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, until the age of ten, when he left his parents and eleven siblings to attend the Arkansas School for the Colored Deaf and Blind, a boarding school in Little Rock. In 1962 Charles enrolled at the Agricultural Mechanical and Normal College (University of Arkanses at Pine Bluff), earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1966. Following a year of study at Haverford College as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow, Charles began his graduate studies at Cornell University. In 1981 he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Cornell. His thesis was titled Roy Wilkins, The NAACP and the Early Struggle For Civil Rights.

Cleo Charles married Rosa Lee Walker in 1969. Rosa Lee was the daughter of Edward Walker, Sr. and Bertha McNeil Walker. Her formative years were spent in Florida and Georgia. She attended Bethune-Cookman College, completing a B.A. degree in mathematics in 1967. Rosa Lee continued her education at the University of Maryland (M.A., 1970) and Cornell University (ABD).

In 1973, the Charleses moved to Berea, Kentucky, where he taught in the history department and she served as the Student Development and Counseling secretary, as head resident at James and Fairchild halls, then fourteen years as Assistant Registrar. Rosa Lee Charles served on numerous college committees and was honored by being named Woman of the Year (1976), recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Award (1976), and Labor Supervisor of the Year (1988). In July 1987, both Rosa and Cleo Charles were designated Honorary Black Alumni of Berea College. Rosa Lee Charles died in 1990. Cleo Charles died thirty years later, in 2020.

Berea College regognized Professor Charles as "an intellectual and spiritual leader to many students and faculty on matters related to human rights, human dignity, and the African American experience, from a caring perspective of Christian morality." From Cleo Charles's obituary we learn that, "He was determined to be treated like Any Other Man! Not a disabled man - but a Man!"

At the time of his death, the Berea College History Department published this tribute:

The Department of History mourns the death of Dr. Cleophus Charles, beloved historian, teacher, mentor, and friend. Over a career of more than twenty-five years, Dr. Charles fought to put the study of African American history and culture at the heart of the college’s life. Not long after he arrived at Berea in 1973, he became the department’s first tenured African American professor. In 1981, he founded the Afro American Studies program, and in 1997 the college formally recognized his extraordinary contributions in teaching, scholarship, and service by naming him Berea’s first Carter G. Woodson Chair in African American history. We mourn Dr. Charles’s passing and remember his distinguished tenure as an intellectual and moral leader in the fight for interracial education.