Prof Kyle is another striking illustration of what a poor boy can do in the face of difficulties. Growing up in Alabama under the hard conditions which prevailed there in the late seventies and the eighties, the boy had no chance for an education, except that which was furnished by the short term (usually three months) ungraded, one room country schools. During crop season there was work on the farm, but it was unremunerative. Thus it happened that he came up to 18, with little education and less money. What he lacked in knowledge and wealth, however, he made up in faith and courage. He went to Knoxville College when he was 18, and entered that institution with 25 cents. He remained seven years and completed the Normal Course in 1902. For two years he worked for fifty cents a months and did his own washing and ironing. It does not require much imagination to see how much he wanted an education. Later he went to Wilberforce and there won his B.S. in Ed. in 1921. The following year the same institution conferred on him the A.M. degree. In 1906, he began teaching at Clarksburg, where he has since resided. The character of his work has brought his steady promotion. He began in the grades, with four subjects in high school. Five years later he was given Latin, History, English and Athletics in the Kelly Miller High School, which was then a high school in name only. Soon after it was put in the third class, then second and is now rated first class. Prof. Kyle now teaches Latin and History. The school has grown from two teachers and fifteen students to six teachers and 80 students.
Prof. Kyle was last year on the faculty of the Summer School at the Petersburg Normal, Petersburg, Va. He is a member of the West Virginia State Teachers Association and of the Association of Teachers in Colored Schools. In politics he is a Republican and was active in helping to put his state in the dry column. He is a member of the Pride Chapel A .M .E. church, Clarksburg, W. Va., in which he is Secretary-Treasurer and Superintendent of the Sunday School. Such is his standing in Sunday School work that he is President of the West Virginia Conference Sunday School Association of the A. M. E. Church, and the colored member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia State S. S. Association. Among the secret and benevolent orders he holds membership in the Masons, Odd Fellows, and the Elks. Prof. Kyle believes that the best interests of the race can be promoted by Christian education, and proper development along business lines, especially the buying of homes.
His reading takes a rather wide range and includes, biography, history, historical fiction, psychology and sociology.