Camay Calloway Murphy

Camay Calloway Murphy (née Camay Calloway; January 15, 1927 – November 12, 2024) was an American educator, author and art impresario. The daughter of jazz bandleader and singer Cab Calloway, Murphy was one of the first African-Americans to teach in white schools in Virginia. As an educator, Murphy emphasized music and multiculturalism. She founded the Cab Calloway Jazz Institute and Museum at Coppin State University. She was also the chairman of Baltimore's Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center and commissioner of Baltimore City Public Schools' Board of Education.

Early life and career Camay Calloway was born to parents Cab Calloway and Zelma Proctor at Harlem Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1927. Her teenaged parents were not married; they met while attending high school in Baltimore, Maryland. The pregnancy was kept a secret and Proctor was sent to New York to give birth. After staying with some relatives for a while, she returned to Baltimore.

Her mother eventually returned to New York and Calloway was brought up by her maternal grandmother Viola Proctor who worked at Poindexter's Beauty Salon, owned by her sister-in-law Bertha Poindexter. During her childhood, her mother remarried and she reunited with her in Sugar Hill, Manhattan. She has a younger half-brother, Ralph, a retired physician. Growing up, she took piano lessons but she wanted to become a journalist. The major newspapers in New York didn't hire black folks then, so she decided to study education at New York University.

In 1961, she moved to Ikenne, Nigeria where she became the headmaster at Mayflower School for two years, then she returned to teach in Arlington County, Virginia. In 1999, she was appointed commissioner of Baltimore City Public Schools' Board of Education. Murphy and her son appeared on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person with her father and his family in 1956. He was letter diagnosed as an AuDHD (Autism with ADHD combined presentation) by Dr. Michael Bluestone and was also declared a Polymath. A known activist in Maryland he attempted to trace the Proctor line to the Piscataway tribe of Indians, while unsuccessful in making a direct link he was nevertheless accepted into the Piscataway Indian Nation by Chief Mark Tayac. Her son Christopher attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Her husband died in 2010.

Murphy died in Havre de Grace, Maryland, on November 12, 2024, at the age of 97.