10/05/2026
In honor of , we want to highlight the incredible story of Eliza "Belle" Mitchell Jackson, the first and only African American teacher hired to work in the school at Camp Nelson's Home for Colored Refugees. Born in Perryville, Kentucky, in 1848, Belle Mitchell was the daughter of formerly enslaved parents who had purchased their freedom before her birth. Belle was a gifted young student, attending private schools in Danville, Kentucky, and Xenia, Ohio.
Reverend John G. Fee selected Belle, aged only 17, to work in the school at Camp Nelson. Fee had met Belle at church in Danville and was impressed by her devout religion, education, and parentage. Under the American Missionary Association, Belle taught the refugee children to read and write, the first education many of these children had ever received. Due to administrative troubles, Belle left Camp Nelson and returned to her home in Danville. She was invited to teach to at the Missionary Free School of Color in Lexington. Belle also taught in the Frankfort, Louisville, Nicholasville, and Richmond.
In 1867, Belle relocated to Berea, Kentucky, where she attended Berea College, an integrated university founded by John G. Fee in 1855. In 1871, Belle married Jordon Jackson, Jr., a formerly enslaved businessman who had become a prominent member of Lexington's African American community. Like Belle, Jordon had a passion for education and served as a Trustee for both Berea College and Wilberforce University. Together, the power couple adopted two children.
In her adulthood, Belle became a businesswoman and activist within the Lexington community. She co-owned the city's only African American operated millinery shop and worked alongside 14 other local African American women to establish the Colored Orphan Industrial Home in 1892, which provided safe lodging, education, and job training to local, orphaned African American youth. She served on the Home's Board of Directors and was elected to serve as the Board's President. Belle committed her life's work to the betterment of Lexington's African American community.
Eliza "Belle" Mitchell Jackson died on November 7, 1942, at the age of 93. She is buried in Cove Haven Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky, alongside her husband, Jordan Jackson, Jr., her daughter, Minnie Jackson Yancey, and her granddaughter, Dr. Sadie Mae Yancey, who inherited Belle's passion for education and served as the Dean of Women at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The impact Belle and the Jackson family had on the Lexington community echoes through the city and region's history today, over 160 years after Belle began teaching at Camp Nelson.
Image: A portrait of Eliza "Belle" Mitchell Jackson. Credit: William Decker Johnson, "Biographical Sketches of Prominent Negro Men and Women of Kentucky" (1897), page 108.
