Joe William Trotter Jr.

Dr. Joe William Trotter Jr. skipped school one day during his senior year to sign up for the Air Force, but, as fate would have it, the recruiting station was closed that day. It turns out fate had other plans for Trotter, and so did one of his Newcomerstown EV Newcomerstown High School teachers. “The following day, my football coach and geography teacher, John Haugh, inquired about my whereabouts the previous day,” Trotter said. “When I informed him of my plans, he seemed shocked that I had not considered enrolling in college. He then emphatically told me that if there was any way that I could go to college, I should do it because I had all the qualifications and capacity to succeed.” Spurred by Haugh’s advice, Trotter’s mother convinced his aunt to let him live with her to attend Kendall Junior College in Illinois after he graduated in 1963. He earned an associate in arts degree at Kendall and later obtained a teaching certificate from Carthage College in Wisconsin. He taught for six years and then earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Minnesota. Now Trotter teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in African-American and U.S. urban, labor and working-class history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He’s the first recipient of the university’s Giant Eagle Professorship, which supports an outstanding faculty member in the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Trotter also directs Carnegie Mellon’s Center for African-American Urban Studies & the Economy. Despite receiving good grades while growing up, Trotter initially pursued a diploma in brick masonry. His father died when he was 12, so during high school, his mother, widowed with 14 children, moved the family to Newcomerstown from West Virginia. “Without access to a trade school in Newcomerstown, I focused exclusively on my academic studies and returned to a powerful engagement with … history and civics,” Trotter said. “My mother encouraged us to do our best in school … and with the help of my teachers, I excelled.” During his career, Trotter has served as president of the Labor and Working Class History Association and on the executive councils of the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association and the Immigration History Society. He currently is a trustee of the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.  Trotter and his wife live in Penn Hills, Pa., and he has five siblings who still live in the Cleveland area. Even though he only attended class for a few years in Ohio public schools, those few years and one teacher forever altered the course of his life. “He (Haugh) said going to college would open doors to a brighter future, he believed, than the military would provide,” Trotter said. “I’m glad I listened and that, most importantly, he believed in me.”