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. == Personal life and death ==