Paper needed with a plagiarism report if possible
Hello. Are you available to write a 2 page paper on Janie porter barrett? It is due by 1am Eastern time if possible?
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) « March 2009
Bill Muth
Thorn Gehring
Margaret Puffer
Camille Mayers
Sandra Kamusikiri
Glenda Pressley
Abstract
One problem with the literature of correctionai education (CE) and prison reform is that
the contributions of African Americans have been generaiiy negiected. This is the first of
three essays that wili begin tofiii that gap. Janie Porter Barrett was an important
Virginia ieader in the period before and after the turn of the 20th century/. She
mobilized funds through the Virginia State Federation ofCoiored Women s Clubs to
estabiish an institution for African American giris outside Richmond, and then became
its first superintendent. Throughout her tenure there. Barrett articuiated and applied
many of the principies that define the modern CE movement. The article indudes a
context for the work of African American reformers as they are (are are not)
represented in the iiterature ofourfieid. a background biographicai sketch on Barrett,
some of the themes of her infiuentiai career in CE and prison reform, and a summary.
The authors learned that the records from Barretts institution became sealed for 100
years in an effort to protect the reputations of persons who had been confined there
during their iifetimes, and they were concerned that this might make information about
Barrett’s contributions even more inaccessible. They hope the material they were able
to access wiii attract attention to this exemplary correctional educator, and that others
will carry on with the traditions Barrett stood for throughout her career.
Do precisely the opposite to what is usually done, and you will have hit on
the right plan, (Rousseau, in Quick, 1916, p, 2
41
)
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
Surely, then, if the present system has totally failed, there must be
something radically wrong in it, and it ought to be changed. (Carpenter,
1969/1864, vol. #2, p. 241)
Background
When correctional educators from the United States interact with members of
the same field from other nations, two or three criticisms are often articulated
at the beginning of the conversation, usually in terms much like the following:
“You Americans lock up too many people, and the proportion of African
Americans and other minorities in your prisons is a problem,’ and ‘Your death
penalty, and its frequency, demonstrate the brutality of your nation.’ Often,
despite being engaged in the same field of education, useful dialogue cannot
be pursued until these criticisms are addressed or at least acknowledged. The
criticisms are accurate, especially when our incarceration rates are compared to
other industrialized nations. Visitors to Virginia find too many African
Americans in confinement and other forms of supervision, in South Dakota too
many Native Americans, in California too many Mexican Americans.
However, the same nations that criticize the U.S. for these reasons are
generally guilty of parallel brutalities that sometimes go unnoticed until one
visits their countries and asks about the situation. Minorities are confined in
great numbers in other nations, as well as in the U.S.-the Germans lock up too
many Turks, the Scandinavians and Bulgarians too many gypsies or Roma, the
Canadians too many Inuit and other Native Americans. This probiem is so
pervasive that it might be associated with the human condition, at least at the
current stage of our maturation. Still, no one can successfully argue that
minority incarceration is not a problem in the United States.
This series of articles can be considered a response to large gaps in the
historical record vis-à-vis the education of African Americans in prison and
African American social reformers. The series presents a criticism of past and
current approaches to penology and correctional education (CE). Further,
through the retelling of the stories of exemplary social reformers-who happen
to be African American-the series strives to establish a more balanced
historical perspective by delineating the contributions of these leaders to
broader social reform movements as well as to their immediate communities.
Moving toward a more balanced perspective. This article is part of a series
of three that is intended to begin to fill a gap in the literature as it relates to the
historic CE contributions of African Americans and themes related to the
education of African Americans. The series will go backward in time. This first
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The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) « March 2009
Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
article introduces the need for the three articles and focuses on the work of
Janie Porter Barrett before and after the turn of the 20th century. The second
will emphasize the education of the freedmen during the occupation of the
Confederacy and after the Civil War, and the role of Hampton Institute. The
final article in this series will focus on the denial of education during the slavery
time. The authors recognize that three articles will not fill the gap, but they
hope they begin the process, and that others will pick up some of the work to
fill the gap as well.
The current authors are pursuing this series of three articles not merely
because they are critical of past practice and hope to provide a small redress,
but also because there are remarkable, inspiring stories and records of
important contributors to the field of CE that have been hidden for too long.
A short critique ofthe historical record. It will probably come as no
surprise that the literature on CE and prison reform does not systematically
treat professional contributions from minority members of the field. Such
treatment should be considered in light of the huge proportion of minority
students confined in our institutions. Minority voices are needed because, in its
efforts to support the education of marginalized people and peoples, the field
of CE is itself marginalized.
Part of the CE/ prison reform literature gap problem is related to the
disproportionate attention given to deficit approaches to penology-the onus
placed on individuals to transform their behavior, attitudes and skills so they
can lead law abiding lives after release. This perspective ignores the context in
which they are expected to transform. But double standards and oppression are
evident historically and in current practice. Evidence suggests that double
standards are applied along the lines of gender, ethnicity or minority status,
and socioeconomic class (Mauer, 2003).
Correctional education is not exclusively about teaching basic academic
and marketable skills. This approach misses the point about citizenship
education, which is not only about educating students for citizenship, but also
about positioning teachers as role models for good citizenship. Part of the
struggle of citizens, and of CE, has always been for equality, democracy, and
freedom; against predatory imperialism, racism, war, sexism, and genocide. The
need for this may be rooted in the settling of America by displaced persons
who were at-risk, persecuted, and convicted-‘indentured servants’ and others
(Ekirch, 1987). Georgia was actually founded as a penal colony, and felons were
exiled to all the colonies until the American Revolution. The transportation of
offenders was one example of this colonizing displacement. Another was the
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TTie Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
orphan trains, which were pursued on a huge, international scale to supply
cheap labor (from orphans) to the frontiers of empires.
The historical record is clear: prisons and other confinement institutions
have been part of the brutal underbelly of imperialism, and they fit into
worldwide patterns of exploitation. It would be difficult to maintain that
teachers who are not struggling against brutality are good role models for
citizenship. It would be impossible to maintain that the schools in which
correctional educators work are fostering citizenship if these issues are
neglected in the classroom. Citizenship is a meaningless term if it does not
attend to the struggle against double standards and oppression. Thomas iViott
Osborne asked central questions about our work: “Are you looking for
immediate or for permanent results? Do you believe in [mental] discipline or in
training? Do you wish to produce good prisoners or to prepare good citizens?”
(1975/1912, p. 212; emphases in original). Those questions remain timely—they
provide a context for the gap that this article helps address.
Despite these contexts, the historical record regarding education of African
Americans in prisons has been generally neglected, and when the issue has
been addressed in the record it has been approached superficially. For example,
the records of the Boston Prison Discipline Society report that in 1828 Sing Sing
Chaplain Gerrish Barrett wrote “After prayers I heard a black man read.” (BPDS,
1972, vol. #1, p. 211). This was noteworthy because many states then had laws
that provided terrible penalties for slaves who tried to acquire literacy, and even
for Whites who had the courage to teach them.
Another example of this neglect is the 1922 report of the Board of
Directors of Virginia Penitentiary, which included the following: “The median
education of the 182 white inmates is that of a fifth grade in our elementary
schools, and the median education of the
40
2 negro inmates is that of a
second grade in our elementary schools” (Virginia, 1922, p. 30). That section of
the report was submitted by education advisor Hoke, who also served as
assistant superintendent of Richmond public schools, in charge of education
programs for backward children (p. 22). The Board emphasized the:
first school…organized at the Penitentiary…|lt] had…two classes of
approximately fifteen white men in each, under an instructor who was a
prison inmate. One class had men of 8 and 9 years and the other men of
10 and 11 years mentality. Attendance in these classes was entirely
optional; in fact, it was conditioned on good conduct. These classes were
soon followed by two other classes for negro inmates, with optional
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Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
attendance. The two groups of white men, as originally organized, are still
[1922] attending instruction. The negro classes have been reclassified. (p. 4)
These two passages, separated in time by about 100 years and in distance
between Virginia and New York, are about all there is in the classic literature on
CE on the education of confined African Americans. In many ways this gap in
the literature corresponds to the gap between our current practice and our
aspirations. Stated alternatively, correctional educators who are alert to these
important themes of the field are concerned that most information has been
inaccessible, an effect that supports and maintains historic patterns of
oppression.
Thus the purpose for this series is twofold: to present stories that serve as
counter-scripts to deficit-models of CE prevalent in the literature, and to help fill
the gap in the CE/prison reform iiterature related to the education of African
Americans in prison and African American social reformers. This first article
highlights the contributions of an exemplary African American educator and
reformer-Janie Porter Barrett. The following two sections present (a)
biographical information about Janie Porter Barrett and (b) thematic glimpses of
her philosophy of practice. Both sections borrow liberaiiy from Barrett’s own
words and reports to summarize her contributions to the fieid of CE and prison
reform.
Janie Porter Barrett: A Biographical Sketch
This section is based on Kneebone, et al. (1998), pp.
35
7-359.
BARRETT, Janie Porter (1865-19
48
), educator, was born in Athens, Georgia,
the daughter of Julia Porter, an African American domestic servant and
seamstress. The name of her father, who may have been white, is
unknown. She grew up in Macon, Georgia, where her mother worked for a
northern white woman named Skinner who treated the chiid almost as a
member of the family. After Julia Porter married and moved to her own
home, Janie Porter remained in the Skinner household. Julia Porter
evidently turned down an offer by Skinner to send her daughter north to
school, where she might have passed into the white world and left her
family forever. Instead, Janie Porter’s mother sent her to Hampton Normal
and Agricultural Institute, the first of the self heip, vocational training
schools for freed people. Porter initially had difficulty adjusting to life in a
school whose students largely came from rural backgrounds. In iater years
she attributed her desire to serve her fellow African Americans to Sir Walter
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The Journai of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
Besant’s Aii Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story, a Utopian
novel published in 1882 in which an heiress worked to heip the poor of
London, (p, 357)
Janie Porter graduated from Hampton Institute in 1884 and taught for four
years in rural Georgia, In 1888 she attended Lucy Laney s Haines Normal and
Industrial school in Augusta, Georgia, Laney, who had herself graduated from
Atlanta University, ‘sought to give a new generation of African Americans a
way to rise in the world by plain living, high thinking, cleanliness, and godliness
coupled with academic and vocational training” (p, 357), By 1889 Porter
returned to Hampton and married Harris Barrett, who had also studied at
Hampton and worked as a bookkeeper and iater became a businessman. They
lived in Hampton and had one son and three daughters’ (p, 357), Barrett
founded activities for community girls: one class or club met nearly every
evening or afternoon-sewing, rug weaving, athletics, general gardening, raising
poultry, cooking, parenting (‘child welfare”), quiiting, and flower growing. On
their own land, the Barretts constructed a clubhouse, and soon the Locust Street
Social Settlement was established, along the same lines as Jane Addams’
Chicago Hull House,
Locust Street typified the growing number of institutions black people were
creating for themselves, paralieiing similar developments in white society.
Another was the National Association of Colored Women, formed in 1896,
which encouraged local clubs to organize state federations. In 1908 Barrett
helped found the Virginia State Federation of Coiored Women’s Clubs, and
she served as its president until 1932, (p, 357)
Barrett was concerned about the terrible conditions in which most African
American children were raised, ‘She often told of finding an eight year oid giri
in jail and becoming convinced of the need for a home for what were then
called wayward girls” (p, 358), Under her leadership, the Virginia State Federation
of Colored Women s Clubs took up this cause, and Barrett toured the State
gathering contributions from its African American communities. In 1912 the
National Association of Colored Women held its conference in Hampton, helping
to fuel Barretts fundraising initiatives. By 1913 she had gained the support of a
number of White Virginia women, ‘Barrett always gave due credit to the white
women and their clubs, though she recognized the greater constancy of her
black supporters” (p, 358), She received technical assistance from the Russell
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The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) » March 2009
Muth, e t al. Janie Porter Barrett
Sage Foundation, which focused on the influence of women In social
improvements. Eventually more than $5,000 had been devoted to the cause.
That was when her Virginia State Federation of Colored Women s Clubs purchased
a farm in Hanover County just north of Richmond, for the school for girls.
White residents near the proposed site of the school objected, but Barrett
promised to take charge of the school as its first superintendent and to move
it if it proved a nuisance to the neighbors. The objections satisfied, the General
Assembly appropriated $3,000 for the Industrial Home School for Colored
Girls, later the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, and it opened its
doors in January 1915. The Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s
Clubs owned and governed the school, which had a large board of visitors
composed of whites and blacks. During the campaign to raise money, [her
husband] Harris Barren died of a stroke on 26 March 1915. (p. 358)
Janie Porter Barreft intended for the new institution to help girls develop
Christian character. Student activities were regulated by the honor system. Using
rewards instead of punishments in its programs, she emphasized the facility’s
role as a home rather than a prison. All activities were aimed at building
agricultural and household skills, and cleanliness. Students were expected to
work on farms or as domestics until they were able to establish their own
homes. The models that had been prototyped at Hampton, and at Tuskegee
Institute, were frequently replicated during Barrett’s tenure as institutional
superintendent. However, her personality was really the “glue” that held the
various program elements together.
In the communities, Barreft struggled to ‘prevent the exploitation of former
students by employers in search of cheap labor” (p. 358). Her success in
garnering support from private sources and the Virginia legislature was
facilitated by both African American and White women.
The African American banker Maggie Lena Walker also gave generously to
the school and organized a Council of Colored Women in Richmond, which
took responsibility for such activities as an annual Christmas dinner for the
girls and staff. Little by little, the successful school received recognition and
praise, (p. 358)
In 1920 the State assumed control of the Industrial Home School for
Colored Girls, but Barrett’s management continued until her 1940 retirement as
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The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
superintendent. In the 1920s the Russell Sage Foundation recognized it as one
of the best such facilities in the nation.
During the 1920s Barrett was active in the Richmond Urban League and
the Virginia Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Regarding voter
preparation as important as institutional programming for girls, Barreft wrote in
19
38
that ‘voting is a duty as well as a fight’ (p. 358). She chaired the National
Association of Colored Women s Executive Board. In 1929 Barreft received the
William E. Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes; in
1930 she was invited to the White House Conference on Child Health and
Protection. After retiring she returned to Hampton. She died in 1948 and was
buried in Hampton s Eimerton Cemetery.
In 1950 the Industrial Home School for Colored Girls was renamed Janie
Porter Barreft School for Girls. Racial integration came in 1965, and
coeducational programming in 1972. In 1977 the institution became Barreft
Learning Center for Boys, and in the early 21 st century it was renovated and
became a correctional training academy.
The next section introduces some CE highlights of Barrett s leadership at
the Industrial School for Colored Girls. The School s Annual Reports, which
Barreft personally wrote, provide a glimpse of her unwavering voice and
dedication to her charges.
Barrett’s Approach to Correctional Education: A Compendium of Her Writings
This section draws on Barretts Annual Reports from 1916-1921,1931, and 19
39
,
unless otherwise noted. (References present relevant report years and page|s|.)
The reports reveal Barrett’s voice as she struggled, schemed, cajoled and
otherwise marshaled support and resources for her school, despite, at times,
overwhelming odds. These steadfast eftorts are organized under these six
headings: Donations, Hardships, School, Inmate Discipline, Release, and
Barrett’s Comments about Her Own Dispositions. The material is intended
merely to introduce these topics-more comprehensive coverage is not possible
in a single article. The authors’ commentary situates this material in a broader
social-historical context within and outside of the CE/prison reform movement
and delineates organic connections that both nourished, and were nourished
by, Barrett’s work.
Donations. Barrett moved comfortably between two worlds. She pursued
local African American communities and northern White philanthropists with
equal intensity.
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Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
The pair of splendid young muies with new harness, the delicious
Christmas dinner, and a pair of new shoes for each girl, given by the
Councii of Colored Women of Richmond, our strongest Federated Ciub,
brought joy enough to last for days. The Federated Clubs of Covington had
a sugar shower just before the sugar shortage was announced |a home
front activity to support the troops during WW I|, and supplied us with
sugar at a time when we could not buy it at any price. At the request of
these women and under the leadership of the public school teachers, the
schooi children of Covington gave a barrel of potatoes. By having each
child bring two or three potatoes this was accomplished without putting
anyone to very great expense. (1918, p.. 12)
Mrs. Falconer…[gave] ten dollars toward a moving-picture outfit, which she
felt would give a pleasure that the giris of the school, who are trying to
improve, ought to have. In a few minutes the audience gave in piedges
and cash one hundred and ninety-five dollars, almost enough money to
pay for the machine. (1920, pp. 10-11)
Our schooiroom was made very comfortable this winter by a splendid
large stove, a gift that came to us through Dr. Gregg. This is the first year
we have had adequate blackboards. We need maps, more desks, and
more school books.(1921, p. 20)
Barrett expressed thanks for ‘…the barrels of clothing friends send from
time to time’ (1921, p. 27). Regarding Thanksgiving dinner after a terrible
influenza attack at the institution, she wrote that ‘When it was all over and
everyone had pulled through, I could feel almost glad for our troubles because
it revealed so many friends that might not have been discovered’ (1919, p. 12).
Barrett was even thankful for governmental services that wouid normally be
extended to White citizens without reservation. She noted that
The white farm demonstrator for Hanover County, after being appeaied to
by our president and others, has consented to come and look us over
occasionaiiy and has given our farmer the privilege of writing him for any
information he desires, so we are sure that we are going to make real
progress now. (1919, p. 15)
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The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
Barrett’s work was situated in impoverished conditions difticult to imagine
by contemporary American educators, even those that work in marginalized
settings and prisons. (However, they likely typify prison schools in many
developing countries-see, for example, Imhabekhai, 2002). Yet, in its broadest
form, the CE work of Janie Porter Barreft in Virginia can be compared to that of
John Henry Pestalozzi in Switzerland or Anton Makarenko in the Soviet Union
(Gehring & Eggieston, 2006). Barreft emerged on the scene at a time when her
people had almost nothing, as a resuit of hundreds of years of systematic
brutality. Pestalozzi built a CE infrastructure when the Swiss had nothing-after
the terrible brutality of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars;
Makarenko built a Soviet CE infrastructure after the devastation of the
Bolshevik Revolution, World War I, and the Civil War. In other words, the
condition of African Americans, after neariy three centuries in North America,
was as if they had just emerged from an intense, protracted war.
Hardships. Barreft pursued State funding with unequivocal directness a n d –
perhaps by today’s standards-modesty. At one point Barreft wrote that the
institution had ‘…aii the modern conveniences except the lighting” (1916, p. 7).
This statement was overly optimistic about the institution. For example, she
later wrote “Our water pipes were frozen for weeks and weeks” (1918, p. 10).
She reiterated the materiai needs of the institution periodicaiiy in her reports.
For exampie, “The rapidly increasing number of girls on parole makes the need
for a parole officer imperative” (1920, p. 15).
Everyone has been obliged to do double work and there has not been one
word of complaint. It is the kind of service that makes faiiure impossible….
It would have been impossible to do what has been done had they |the
Board of Managers] not stood so completely behind me. (1920, p. 23)
We still have a poor farm. I have come to the conclusion that it requires not
only rich land but brains to farm successfully and, though I hate to confess
it, brains are almost as scarce as hens’ teeth among some of our
farmerettes and of course the land speaks for itself. (1921, p. 21 ; emphasis
in original)
My earnest plea to the Board is that if possibie we get an adequate
appropriation…We who are managing affairs in the institution are at a loss
to know what to do when it gets too coid for the children to go barefooted
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Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
and shoes must be bought,,,and the children must have at least a sweater;
and finally, when the time comes to open school and no provision
is made to pay a teacher,,.
There has never been a time when our children have had all the clothes
they need for a change. They have always been obliged to wash their
clothes at night in order to have them clean for the next day,,,.
We need school the year round with two iiterary teachers and an industrial
teacher,,,We need more library books. We need a sum set aside to meet
the expenses of visiting the girls and investigating homes,,,We need
transportation for girls,,,We need domestic-science equipment and sewing-
room equipment,,,We need dentai services.
We need-and this is a crying need-mentai tests for our girls. It is very
difficult to ascertain whether our girls’ failures are their own fault or that of
those of us who have paroled them when they have not the mentality to
make their own pay,
I should like banjos, guitars, ukuleles, cornet, fife and drum; we need an
orchestra and a drum corps, (1921, pp, 31-33)
After 16 years of operation, Barrett still reported salient needs, ‘We still
have no cows,,,,I look forward to the time when we can afford whole miik for
every girl” (1931, p, 6),
Barrett’s running catalogue of needs again reflects the paucity of resources
at her disposal, but, as well, her visionary stance (‘,,,orchestra, drum corps.,,”)
toward education. This stance is grounded in the Social Settlement Movement
that flourished in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in London’s East
End, and manifested in such social projects as Toynbee Hall and the People’s
Palace, These university settlements, described in near-utopian terms in Walter
Besant’s (1903) Aii Sorts of Conditions of Men. epitomized broad liberal, social and
civic curricuia, including beautiful libraries, great performance halls,
gymnasiums and winter gardens. In 1920 America, the settlement movement
also stirred Jane Addams’ work at Hull House in Chicago, and social workers in
hundreds of other settlement houses throughout the U,S,
School. Barrett’s passion for education is reflected in her hands-on
oversight of the school. Her exulted notions about the power of clubs as an
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Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
extension of the curriculum are based on Besant’s (1903) work and her own
successful experiences with social clubs at Locust Street Seftlement House.
A thorough course in domestic science will be given which will include the
care of poultry, vegetable and flower gardens, lawns and anything else
that we find will be needed. Miss Hyde, the lady principal of Hampton
Institute…promised to help us plan this course. (1916, p. 10)
Special activities and clubs included…were: Charm Club, Y-Teens, Junior
Red Cross, Girl Scouts, choir, 4-H Club, Dramatic Ciub, New Homemakers,
Student Councii…Religious Education. (1916, p. 10)
In the Social Settlement Movement, clubs were not merely designed to
relieve monotony and the hardness of life among the poorer classes; they
provided opportunities for what Wenger (1998) calls communities of practice.
On one level clubs provided a communal structure for informal learning, on
another, community where pro-social and pro-educational identities were
forged and nurtured. In Barrett’s day this social learning model was exemplified
by the summer program at Shellbanks-the farm at Hampton Institute-where
rural African American youth were recruited to live in the dorms for a few
weeks, wear the institute’s uniform, participate in 4H style projects, and imagine
themselves as college students (Brawley, 1939).
Within the largely agrarian program at the Industrial School, Barreft
lobbied, cajoled and advocated for high academic standards and certifications
commensurate with schools for white children. ‘We are greatly handicapped
because we have neither school house nor proper equipment. Miss Peterson,
Superintendent of Kilbourne Farm, the school for delinquent white girls, sent us
some of the books that her girls had finished using’ (1918, p. 18). “This year we
were fortunate in gefting the State Board of Education to put our school on its
list and…supplied with a literary teacher and an industrial teacher’ (1919, p. 12).
She noted:
We still have two sessions a day….If we could have a teacher the year
round, the timetaken out of school for planting and harvesting crops and
for many other things that have to be done on the farm…could be made
up. (1920, pp. 15-16)
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Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
Our classes are not sufficiently organized and do not cover enough ground
to receive a certificate in cooking and sewing, but we are still working to
this end and we are nearer to it than we were a year ago. In time I hope
there will be a class each year to receive these certificates when we have
our annuai exercises and exhibit |at the County Fair]. It will be the nearest
thing to a diploma that the majority of them will ever receive. (1921, p. 18)
‘Without such…lan educational] preparation we must not be disappointed
if they return to a life of crime and shame” (1931, p. 7). ‘The industrial
training….equipment is woefully out of date. This lack becomes increasingly
serious as the use of modern conveniences becomes more general.’ (1931, p. 9).
Four giris were recommended in May to complete…seventh grade…
certificates if they passed both in academic studies and conduct. This they
did with credit. Commencement activities were as elaborate as we could
aftord….The four girls…[were] placed in homes …earning wages and
saving with the expectation of entering high schooi…. Only a very small
percentage…have the ability to take higher academic training. (1931, p. 8)
We continue to paftern our program of academic training after that of the
public schools of the State with the idea that, when our charges are
returned to society they will be none the worse for the interruption in their
attendance at the pubiic school….It is our sincerest hope that funds wiii be
forthcoming for the erection of a school building which will meet minimum
standards at least. (1939, p. 7)
Barrett was a tireless civil rights advocate. Her quest to give her girls an
educationai experience commensurate with White public schools-including
commencement ceremonies ‘as elaborate as we could afford’ presaged
contemporary eftorts to bring fully commensurate graduation ceremonies to
adult prisoners, even to those who completed Adult Basic Education
(McCollum, 1983).
Inmate discipline. The Industrial School program was steeped in the
mutual aid and self-help traditions that evolved from the late 19th century
Social Seftlement Movement. The Industrial Home Schooi for Coiored Girls
employed progressive methods that typified these traditions—such as honor
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Janie Porter Barren Muth, et. al.
systems-and banned the use of corporal punishment. One proactive way to
diminish bad behavior was to keep the girls busy.
Sunday is such a hard day for the girls to get through without gefting into
trouble. They have so much time on their hands, and if I don’t give them
something to do, Satan will.
Virginia Coftage is used, as was planned, for the reception coftage, each
girl on entering being assigned there and closely observed and studied
from all angles. She is given ten days to learn the rules and regulations,
after which she is marked each day for work, conduct, and personal
appearance. She is then in line to work for the white dress and promotion
to the honor cottage, which is Federation Coftage. Fighting, quarreling,
abusive language, stealing, running away, are all to be overcome before a
girl can receive a white dress, and after the much desired white dress has
been awarded, if she forgets in a fit of temper and goes back to her old
habits, she loses her dress and has to start at the beginning and work for it
again. Knowing this she develops self-controi more rapidly. (1920, p. 13)
If…a girl s behavior is so disgraceful that she has to be locked up in the
Thinking Room’ she has to wear a brown dress. The activities of the
brown-dress girl’ must be confined to road…work, which consists of
carrying from the gravel pit to the roads on the grounds a…number of
bucketsful of gravel which varies according to the nature of her
misdemeanor. If her spirit is good she may carry as many as three or four
bucketsful at a time in a wheel-barrow or push cart. If her spirit is ugly she
has to bring up the gravel a half-bucketful at a time. This gives her all the
fresh air she needs to revive her spirits and…lengthens the time she must
wear the brown dress. When she is finally permitted to take this off she
wears faded and patched uniforms…the dresses allotted to the mistakes
and failures.’ From this she has to work up again as if she had newly
entered the school. (1921, pp. 13-14). The weekly honor roll is a great help.
The names of all girls making A in conduct, eftort, and work appear on the
honor roll each Monday morning. All girls who get their names on the
honor roll are considered the first citizens of our community, and each one
of these is permitted to wear a small American flag to the Assembly. (1921,
p. 14)
44
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) « March 2009
Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
When a girl was promoted to the Student Officers’ Corps, designated by a
bar on the right sleeve, she took the following pledge:
I pledge my loyalty to the Virginia Industrial School and to the principles
for which it stands. 1 promise to try to be worthy of the special privileges
granted me. I promise to respect and obey authority; not to steal, or to
allow anyone to steal, if I know it, without reporting it. I promise not to run
away and to report any girl making plans to run away. I pledge to give my
absolute support to the ofticers of the institution in maintaining law and
order. (1921, p. 12)
Barreft cultivated strong civic values in her girls by helping them learn to
govern themselves. Note, again, the elevated use of clubs to create social
spaces where her charges could forge new identities.
So many things that used to have to come before the officers are managed
by the girls through their clubs. They serve two purposes: they give an
opportunity to the girls to practice the social virtues taught through the
moral instruction given; and they are most effective in teaching the girls to
obey each other, which simplifies the discipline wonderfully. There are two
clubs. The Friendly Girls’ Club is made up of honor girls only and its object
is, first, to obey the rules, and, second, to be helpful to the ofticers and to
each girl in the school, especially the new girls. If one of their members
violates a rule or does anything unbecoming she is handled by the club, a
thing they very much dread. I heard a girl crying one day as if her heart
would break. When 1 asked her what the trouble was, she said that she
had been turned out of the club for speaking rudely to the girls when she
passed the coats. I asked her if they would not take her back when she got
to be polite. She said yes, but that it was a terrible disgrace to be turned
out. The True Blue Club, 1 think, takes its name from the blue uniforms. It is
made up of the uniform girls who devote their entire energies to self-
improvement so that they can become honor girls. Every uniform girl has
to be a member of the True Blue Club until she becomes an honor girl, and
then her highest ambition is to belong to the Friendly Girls’ Club. (1918, p. 23)
The girls elect the head student ofticer but their choice must meet the
approval of the entire Staft. (1931, p. 7)
45
n i e Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) ° March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
The historian Sol Cohen (1964) characterized the Social Settlement
Movement as ‘between old school and new school” (p, 138), Reformers like
Janie Porter Barrett believed that poverty was still the result of sin, sloth and
vice and that a her giris required a large dose of moral reformation. But she
also recognized the social roots of poverty and the need to reform social
structures. Her views are reflected in her discipline practices, which provide swift
penaities for misbehavior but also evoke a sense of trust in the child’s capacity
to live a moral life when she is provided heaithy social structures within which
to grow, Barrett’s views are simiiar to the seif-governance ideas of Wiiiiam
George (1910), and resonate in the contemporary debates between Michaei
Dyson and Bill Cosby,
Release. Barrett understood the profound needs for continued support
after the girls were released from the caring structure of the Industrial Home
School for Colored Girls, Contemporary proponents of the re-entry movement
would do well to ponder the simple-yet radical by today’s standards-idea of
continuity of support provided through personal relationships with caring
practitioners,
I keep in touch with the girl by writing as often as I can and the lady to
whom she is paroled sends a report once a month and oftener if the girl
gives any trouble, I encourage the girls to write very fuily about the things
that seem hard to them, if they are hard I write,,,the iadies about them; if
they are not hard, 1 show the girl that she is mistaken. In this way so much
misunderstanding is saved,,,,our girls,,,their complete success depends
upon placing them in Christian homes where they can be helped after
leaving the institution until they are strong enough to stand alone, (1918,
pp, 14-15; emphases in original)
Our plan is not to allow any girl whom we send out to live an immorai life.
If she is not self-respecting she must come back untii she can learn to be.
This fact braces our girls and makes them try very hard to be respectable,
and if they get help and protection in the home to which they go they will
not faii, 1 do not believe there are any people in the world more anxious to
be respectable than colored girls; when they are given the right standards
and are heiped they will make good, (1918, p, 16)
Barrett’s vigilance was not limited to the behavior of her students; it
extended to their caretakers and the conditions of reiease as well:
46
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
We must do something to have the people taking these girls understand
more fully that our Board of Managers insist that they be kindly treated.
Slapping a girl and striking her on the head are out of the question. This
kind of treatment, aside from being absolutely wrong, can do no good, and
will create a condition that will be most difficult to handle. Anyone having
a giri is given the right to bring her back to the school whenever she
ceases to give satisfaction, so there is no need of doing anything rash.
(1920, p. 15)
All…things [that] endear the school to the giris and form ties which hold
them in a wonderful way after they leave us [are helpful). 1 want each girl
to feel in going out that at the school there are always friends awaiting her
when she finds herself in need of help, and who are glad of any success
she makes, no matter how littie it may be. (1921, p. 18)
In today’s large, overcrowded prisons, we hardly know what to make of
Barrett’s approach to release. What warden has time to write regularly to her
released charges? Yet precious truths are hidden beneath the quaintness of
Barrett’s reports. Her words remind us of the forgotten potential of institutions
to foster relationship, trust and community, and the moral power embedded in
the imagined act of answering to a respected other. Barrett’s actions provide
sharp contrast to our dismally failing Re-Entry systems based on negative
expectations and mistrust, impersonal surveillance systems (Foucault, 1975) and
bureaucratic Re-Entry structures.
Barrett’s comments about her own dispositions. Barreft’s life story
embodies a voice of determined optimism, commitment, strength. Her
‘continuous plea’ should not be misunderstood today as a submissive stance.
We end this brief study of Janie Porter Barrett with some of her reflections
about herself, the school, staft and students, and their collective
accomplishments:
…Negro women with human slavery less than seventy years behind
them…white women, products of hundreds of years of education and
culture, joining hands and working together that the least among them
might have their chance. What sacrifice and struggle…of… Negro women
who had so little to share; what courage in…white women who laid aside
custom and…traditions to champion a cause so unpopular! I wish…their
every encourag-ing word and helpful act might be recorded as they burn in
47
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) « March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
my memory…as a guide to future generations who…contribute to human
betterment. This… stands as a memorial to brave women, white and black,
who forgot their prejudices…overcame…distrust in order that the
underprivileged Negro girl might…]have] an opportunity for training and
develop-ment. The school could not have been built by colored women
alone…not…by white women aione, but together they have given to the
Commonwealth an institution without which its organization for social
welfare would be incomplete. (1939, p. 6)
When we compare our present surroundings with the wilderness in which
our institution had its birth, our unbounded faith in the things we are yet
to accomplish is no source of wonder. The site…was a barren spot indeed:
a baftlefield during the war between the States, and before that an
exhausted tract rendered worthless by unscientific farming. And nothing
had been done to improve the soil since the war. Now the land flourishes.
Trees, flowers, fruits and vegetables bear silent witness to our conquest of
desolation. In the beginning, even more than now, belief in the thing we
wanted to do for the underprivileged girls of our Commonwealth, and in
the way by which we proposed to accomplish this… was the exception
rather than the rule and so money came slowly and in small amounts, and
we had to use every means of extracting the largest possible returns from
the resources at our command….Gradually, as a result of ]our building up
of the land]…the soil regained much of its iong lost fertility. Our hunger for
beauty led us to our woods, from which we transplanted holly, dogwood,
beechnut and sweet gum. (1939, p. 5)
Whenever I leave ]the facility] I ask the Lord to let no harm come to…]the
girls]. I feel responsible for these irresponsible children, soul and
body…don’t want them maiming themselves. (1920, p. 21)
My part in the work of this institution has always been to me a very sacred
trust-sacred because the State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs let
me persuade them to assume the responsibility of establishing the
institution; sacred because of the white friends who worked with us when
the cause was less popular than it now is; when their co-operation…did
not meet the approval of their friends and was therefore far from an easy
task for them; sacred because of the state aid voted by our
legislature…though small at first…increased yearly until the
48
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) ° March 2009
Muth, et. al. Janie Porter Barrett
State…assumed the entire responsibility. So, beneath my continual plea for
adequate support is the earnest desire to keep our institution abreast of
the times…[to! serve in a iarger way in improving the citizenry…and to
build an institution worthy of the friends who have stood by us, and
worthy of our great Commonwealth. (1931, p. 12)
We are left with an aggregate picture of a compassionate, humble, and
determined pioneer. Barrett was a social reformer inspired by the Social
Seftlement Movement; she possessed an uncompromising sense of social justice
and a deep commitment to her students and to her community. She was well
aware of the deep racism and segregation in the Jim Crow South of her day,
yet believed strongly in the need for collaboration across color lines and moved
with ease in both White and Black society. She was, in short, an exemplary
correctional educator.
Conciusion
Janie Porter Barreft’s Annual Reports for the Industrial Home Schooi constituted
a life’s work in the service of delinquent African American girls and in the fight
against institutionalized racism and Injustice. The State legislature provided
State funds to estabiish similar institutions for White girls, and for White boys,
but it did not extend this service to African American girls and boys. So Barrett
mobilized funds from Virginia’s African American communities and from White
citizens who found merit in her work. Then the State legislature assumed
control of the institution’s physical plant and all its programs. Barrett continued
in her leadership role, despite this change.
Her tenure at the Industriai Home School for Colored Girls was marked by
many hardships; yet her work advances our ideas about CE, inmate discipline,
moral education, Re-Entry, and even the expansion and improvement of
physical plants and fundraising. The authors hope that this brief portrayal of a
pioneering African American correctional educator will help address the gap in
the historical record noted at the beginning of this essay.
There Is much in her work that was exemplary, and a few elements that
are artifacts of a difterent time. It would be inappropriate for modern readers to
apply current standards to her work, because even best practices from one
period may not be useful in another period. The CE work of Janie Porter Barreft
defied the extreme racial and material barriers of her time. Perhaps her most
remarkable accomplishment was the community she provided her vuinerable
students-a community that nurtured growth and was inspired by the highest
educational ideals of her age.
49
The Journal of Correctional Education 60(1) • March 2009
Janie Porter Barrett Muth, et. al.
References
Barrett, J.P. (1916). First annual report of the Industrial Home School for Colored Girls.
Peake’s Turnout, Virginia: The Virginia State Federation of Coiored Women’s Cubs.
Barrett, J.P. (1917). Second annual report of the Superintendent To the president and members of
the Board of Trustees. Peake’s Turnout, Virginia: The Virginia State Federation of
Colored Women’s Clubs.
Barrett, J.P. (1918). Third annual report of the Superintendent To the president and members of
the Board of Trustees. Peake’s Turnout, Virginia: The Virginia State Federation of
Colored Women’s Clubs.
Barrett, J.P. (1919). Fourth annual report of the Superintendent, To the president and members of
the Board of Trustees. Peake’s Turnout, Virginia: Ttie Virginia State Federation of
Colored Women’s Clubs.
Barrett, J.P. (1920). Fifth annual report of the Superintendent To the president and members of the
Board of Trustees. Peake’s Turnout, Virginia: The Virginia State Federation of Colored
Women’s Clubs.
Barrett, J.P. (1921 ). Sixth annual report of the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls. Formerly
the Industrial Home School. Peake’s Turnout, Virginia.
Barrett, J.P (1931 ). Sixteenth annual report of the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girts.
Peake, Virginia.
Barrett, J.P. (1939). Report of the Superintendent of the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls,
for the year ending June 30, 1939. Peake, Virginia.
(BPDS) Boston Prison Discipline Society. (1972). Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of
Boston, 1B26-1B54. IVlontciair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith.
Besant, W. (1903). Allsorts and conditions of men. An impossible story. London: Chatto a
Windus.
Brawiey B. C. (1939). A short history of the American negro. New York: Macmiilan.
Burns, K. (January 5-7, 2001 ). All that jazz. USA Today
Carpenter, iVI. (1969/1864). Ourconvicts. Montciair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith.
Cohen, S. (1964). Progressives and urban school reform: The public education association of New
York City 1895-1954. New York: Teachers College Press
Ekirch, A.R. (1987). Bound for America: The transportation of British convicts to the colonies,
1716-1775. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Foucault, iVI. (1975). Discipline and punish. Paris: Gallimard. (First American edition. New
York: Pantheon, 1978).
Gehring, T. a Eggleston, C. (2006). Correctional education chronology San Bernardino:
California State University Press.
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Company.
Imhabekhai, C. I. (2002). An appraisal ot prison services in Edo State Nigeria. Journal of
Correctionai Education, 53, 5-8.
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Kneebone, J,T,, Looney, B.T, Treadway, S.G, Gentry, D., and Gunter, D. (1998). Dictionary of
Virginia biography: Voiume 7 Aaroe-Bianciifieid. Richmond: Library of Virginia, pp, 357-
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The Sentencing Project,
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Correctional Education. 34. 9-11.
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Montclair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith,
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Cambridge University Press.
Biographical Sketches
DR. BILL MUTH is an Assistant Professor of Adult and Adolescent Literacy at Virginia
Commonwealth University,
DR. THOM GEHRING, is a Professor in the Education, Psychology and Counseling
Department, California State University San Bernardino, and Director of the Center for the
Study of Correctional Education,
MARGARET PUFFER is a teacher in the Alternative and Correctional Schools Unit of the
Orange Co, California Department of Education.
DR. CAMILLE MAYERS, is a Professor in the Education, Psychology and Counseling
Department, California State University San Bernardino.
DR. SANDRA KAMUSIKIRI is the Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Provost for
Assessment, California State University, San Bernardino.
GLENDA PRESSLEY directs the statewide education programs in the California Division of
Juvenile Justice,
51
JAME PORTER BARRETT AND
THE VIRGINIA INDUSTRIAL
SCHOOL FOR COLORED GIRLS:
COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO THE
NEEDS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN
CHILDREN
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
a social ethos evolved among African American women
that led to internal child welfare reform in legally
segregated African American communities. This article
describes the nature of these child welfare developments
and provides a historical example using the Virginia
Industrial School for Colored Girls. Prevailing themes
derived from the historical account are discussed in a
contemporary context.
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins, Ph.D., is Acting Dean, Boston University School of Social
Work, Boston, MA.
0009-4061/95/010143-19 $1.50 © Child Welfare League of America 143
144 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV. #1 • January-February
V
irginia will not forget that she is indebted to the
colored women of the Commonwealth for the
Industrial Home School. [Davis 1920:362]
Historically, African American child welfare services have
evolved as a response to exclusion, differential treatment, segre-
gation, and other forms of racial oppression [Billingsley &
Giovannoni 1972; Smith 1991; Stehno 1988]. Internal social re-
form and selective services for African American children have
resulted from mutual aid-oriented responses on the part of Afri-
can American churches and voluntary associations, and benevo-
lence originating from interracial cooperation, the work of
Caucasian philanthropists, and governmental sponsorship. The
Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, founded in 1915,
was initially maintained by the Virginia Federation of Colored
Women’s Clubs through organized interracial cooperation. Exist-
ihg today as the Barrett Learning Center, this institution re-
sponded to dependent and delinquent African American girls
and exemplifies the fulfillment of one of the national directives of
the National Association of Colored Women. Using guiding
principles from educational theory and from the Child Welfare
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation (forerunner of the
Child Welfare League of America), the Virginia Industrial
School, under the leadership of Janie Porter Barrett, provided
“convincing reform efforts” by means of a humanistic living and
learning environment and preparation for transition to the com-
munity [Davis 1920:358].
Child Welfare Work and the
African American Comriiunity
Between 1877 and 1900, the status of African Americans was
being socially redefined [Ogbu 1978]. In general, conditions for
impoverished African American children in the South were de-
plorable. Emancipation resulted in the problem of who would
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 145
care for dependent African American children. African American
children were excluded from any meaningful and structured
govenunental care aside from the in-home services offered to
former slave families by a few pre-Civil War private orphanages
[Billingsley & Giovannoni 1972: 27-33], the orphanages estab-
lished by the short-lived Freedman’s Bureau, and almshouses.
Mutual aid organizations and voluntary associations or self-help
efforts became the dominant mode of care for dependent African
American children immediately after emancipation and beyond
[Billingsley & Giovannoni 1972]. African American status was
based on separation laws and customs between 1900 and 1930
[Ogbu 1978], and the existing governmental child welfare system
was not adequately responding to the needs of African American
children.
The child-saving activities of the mid-nineteenth through the
early twentieth centuries led to the establishment of industrial
schools and other institutions primarily for the care of poor Cau-
casian immigrant children who were dependent, abused, ne-
glected, or delinquent. For the most part, African American
children were not the focus of this early crusade for children.
Although the juvenile court system was established as early as
1899, the practice of putting African American children in jail
persisted in many communities well into the twentieth century.
In 1976 in Virginia, for example, 75 years after the practice was
prohibited by state law, a large number of children under age 15
were still being jailed, generating community concern [Child
Jailings Decline .. . 1976]. As segregation customs and laws per-
sisted, young dependent African American children were either
jailed or sent to reform schools even when not delinquent be-
cause communities were slow to respond to the need for
homefinding and family foster care services for African Ameri-
can children.
During the early decades of the twentieth century, voluntary
associations founded by African American women began to con-
front the urunet needs of African American children and youths.
146 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV. #1 • January-February
Kindergartens, day nurseries, and schools for dependent and
delinquent African American children were developed in re-
sponse to the racial uplift mandates emanating from the philoso-
phy of the National Association of Colored Women. Founded in
1896, this association represented African American clubwomen
from coast to coast in about 40 states. Its organizational philoso-
phy was promulgated by the first president, Mary Church Ter-
rell, whose words [1899: 346] are typical of the clubwomen’s
collective moral authority in the African American community:
As an Association, let us devote ourselves enthusiasti-
cally, conscientiously, to the children . . . Through the
children of today, we must build the foundation of the
next generation upon such a rock of integrity, morality,
and strength, both of body and mind, that the floods of
proscription, prejudice, and persecution may descend
upon it in torrents, and yet it will not be moved. We hear
a great deal about the race problem, and how to solve it
. . . but the real solution of the race problem, both so far as
we, who are oppressed and those who oppress us are
concerned, lies in the children.
The perceived internal social reform duties of African Amer-
ican clubwomen to the race are best chronicled and understood
through their autobiographical and other personal and biograph-
ical accounts. Community perceptions, as expressed in anecdotal
accounts in the African American news media, are also useful.
For the most part, child welfare services that developed through
the clubwomen’s movement were residual in nature and were
replaced by institutionalized social welfare arrangements after
the Great Depression. After the Progressive Era, the broader
crusade for children, as noted by Chambers [1963], expanded
into other family welfare areas, and the new focus was on devel-
oping noninstitutionally based services. These changes undoubt-
edly had some impact on services for African American children.
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 147
Some private services for the children persisted until the 1940s,
but were discontinued because of inadequate funding and likely
also because of increased govert\mental alternatives for the Afri-
can American community after World War II [Axinn & Levin
1982]. Others persisted as privately supported institutions and
still others were subsumed under state auspices.
For example, in Kansas City, Missouri, the Colored Big Sister
Home for Girls, founded by Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry
in 1934, existed as a state-contracted private institution through
the 1940s. Perry, together with the Colored Big Sister Association,
began the first homefinding services for African American chil-
dren in Kansas City, Missouri, because standard home placement
services by the local Community Charities Chest Committee
were not available to African American children. Instead, depen-
dent young girls released from the local orphanage at age 12
were sent to the state institution for delinquents until the age of
17. Homefinding efforts eventually culminated in the establish-
ment of a residential care facility. The Big Sister Home helped
these young girls move into the community by affording access
to schools, training in homemaking skills, and employment
placements in private homes [Peebles-Wilkins 1989:40].
Another example of institution-building involved the found-
ing by Carrie Steele of an orphanage in Georgia to care for infants
and children she found abandoned in the Atlanta Terminal Rail-
road Station where she worked as a maid. The Carrie Steele
Orphan Home was constructed and chartered as a nonprofit
institution in 1888 after a successful community fund-raising
effort by Steele. She had previously been caring for these children
in her own home at night and watching them play in the terminal
by day. In 1923, the Home became a United Way-supported
agency and exists today as the Carrie Steele-Pitts Home, serving
about one hundred neglected, abused, abandoned, or orphaned
children of all races, from six to 18 years of age [Carrie Steele-
Pitts, Inc. 1988]. The Virginia Federation of Club Women turned
the Virgirua Industrial School over to the state in 1920; today it
148 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV. #1 • January-February
continues to operate as the Barrett Learning Center in Hanover
County, Virginia, a public agency for juvenile delinquents of all
races. Table 1 presents a chronological development of the Vir-
girüa Industrial School.
Barrett’s Home School
Internal child welfare reform and services by African American
clubwomen, like settlement house services provided by Lillian
Wald and Jane Addams, reflected the personality traits of the
founders [Kogut 1972]. Such was the case with the Virginia In-
dustrial School for Colored Girls with its flowering, landscaped
campus. Anne Firor Scott [1992: 90], noting that the Virgirüa
Industrial School became a model school that other states tried to
emulate, described a visible atmosphere of trust and hope attrib-
utable to Barrett’s personality. In addition to her unique skills in
facilitating a growth-promoting milieu at her home school,
Barrett’s skill in developing and maintaining interracial group
support also contributed to the amount of financial and material
resources available and the level of broad-based commurûty en-
dorsement for the school. Barrett’s successful approach to delin-
quent African American girls was likely the result of a
combination of her ability to effectively incorporate consultation
from Hastings Hart of the Russell Sage Foundation and child
welfare practices later promoted by C. C. Carstens, first director
of the Child Welfare League of America.
Janie Porter Barrett was born in Athens, Georgia. She was
reared as a family member in the Skinner home, where her
mother was employed as a housekeeper and seamstress. Edu-
cated in mathematics and literature in this Caucasian family, she
was exposed to persons of privilege and refinement and grew up
with a lifestyle atypical of the African American community. Her
mother later seht her to Hampton Institute in Virginia, where she
was trained as an elementary school teacher. At Hampton, Bar-
rett [1926: 361] was inculcated with patriotic, altruistic values.
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 149
TABLE 1
Chronological Development of the Virginia Industrial Schooi
Date Historical Development
1911
January 1913
May 1913
January 1915
November 1915
1916
1919
1920
1927
1940
1950
1965
1970s
Fund-ratstng began
147 acre farm site purchased for Virginia Industrial Home
School for Colored Girls
First board meeting
First two girls admitted
Barrett appointed superintendent
First cottage built
Second cottage and school building added
Placed under state control, renamed Virginia Industrial School
for Colored Girls
Superintendent’s residence built
Barrett retires as superintendent
Renamed Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls
School is racially integrated
Renamed Barrett Learning Center
Source: Compiled from the cited primary source data in the Peabody Collection, Leader
(1916); Hampton University and the Virginia Welfare Bulletin (1956).
and a sense of duty to her race, learning lessons “in love of race,
love of fellow-men, and love of country.” Her worldview led to
the development of an industrial home school based on a philos-
ophy of social and human development lodged in educational
programming.
The Industrial Home for [Wayward] Colored Girls opened its
doors in Hanover County near Richmond in 1915 on a 147-acre
site purchased by the Virginia Federation of Colored Women’s
Clubs, an orgaruzation founded by Barrett, its first president,
between 1907 and 1908 [Peebles-Wilkins 1987]. At the time the
school was founded, it was estimated that about 500 young Afri-
can American girls needed supervised care, training, and rehabil-
itation. The farmland with a farmhouse had been purchased in
1914, but the federation had been gradually raising money since
1911 and anticipated paying for the land in full after five years
[Aery 1915]. Urged on, however, by the sentencing of an eight-
150 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV, #1 • January-February
year-old African American girl to six months in jail, “every
woman gave until she could feel it” [Barrett 1926: 356]. Having
raised $5,300, the federation paid for the land, chartered the
school, and designated the farmhouse as Federation Cottage after
the clubwomen’s organization. Barrett’s encounter with the
judge to get custody of the eight-year-old girl gives us a glimpse
of differential perceptions and the handling of dependent Afri-
can American girls by the Virgirtia juvenile justice system.
Prior to establishing the Industrial Home, Barrett had al-
ready established a Child Welfare Department at the Locust
Street Settlement. In addition to guidance for young mothers
and helping children through adolescence, a committee from
the Child Welfare Department had been successfully removing
underage African American children from jail to alternative
placements [Daniel 1931: 57-58]. A Negro reform school had
been founded by the Virginia African American community as
early as 1897 [Ludlow 1904], but putting African American
children in jail and the lack of differential planning for depen-
dent African American children persisted. Barrett read about
the sentencing of the eight-year-old child in the newspaper
and immediately appealed to the judge in Newport News,
Virginia, to send the child to the Weaver Orphan Home in
Hampton, Virginia, where Barrett was living. The judge, view-
ing the child as a criminal who was in court because African
American women needed to look after their children, only
reluctantly released the child into Barrett’s care. Thus, Barrett
[1926: 355-356] was able to “save Virginia the disgrace of mak-
ing a baby like this serve a sentence.”
A juvenile court was established in Newport News shortly
after Barrett’s encounter, but this rather dramatic example of the
need for a more specialized facility for dependent African Amer-
ican children served to raise the consciousness of both the Afri-
can American and Caucasian middle-class communities. The
federation quickly recognized that the support of men and
women of both races was necessary to fully realize its goals.
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 151
Some state support was necessary to supplement private
fund-raising, but the Virginia state governmental system had a
practice of not allowing any women—Caucasian or African
American—to receive and manage funds. For the facility to be
considered for a state financial appropriation, a board consisting
of Caucasian women and businessmen was recommended. Bar-
rett, however, recognized that continued and active participation
by the African American community was essential to ensure the
success of the girls and the home school. (For example, some of
the private fund-raising was associated with donors who had
been cultivated by Hampton Institute). Although organizing an
interracial board in segregated Virginia was discouraged, after
much persistence and with a great deal of effort, Barrett was able
to organize such a board, comprising both men and women from
the North and South, to obtain a small state supplement [Aery
1915: 604]. The school opened in spite of “vigorous protests”
from the local Caucasian community, with Barrett stating, “Beg
them to give us a chance—to try us. If the school proves objec-
tionable, I promise to move it” [Daniel 1931: 59]. To ensure the
success of her home school, she took on the position of superin-
tendent. Board members, along with federation club members,
played key roles in supporting Barrett as superintendent, raising
funds, visiting similar schools in the North, enlisting community
endorsement, and helping to identify homes where girls could be
placed when ready for the community.
Although sources do not afford a great many details on the
child welfare consultation provided to the Industrial School, the
operations of the school itself shed light on the influences of the
Child Welfare Department of the Russell Sage Foundation and of
the standards set by the Child Welfare League of America be-
tween 1921 and 1925. The delinquency institution was expected
to have social responsibilities, which included assuring that insti-
tutionaiization was the last resort, providing adequate prepara-
tion for parole once children were admitted, and including
investigation and follow-up in discharge planning [Harrison
152 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV, #1 • January-February
1985:590-594]. Before officially opening the home school, advice
about industrial training was sought from Dr. Hastings Hart at
Russell Sage. The Russell Sage Foundation cottage plan was used
to create a homelike environment for the girls. The operations of
the cottage system and the overall operations and goals of the
industrial home for girls modeled the social responsibilities of a
delinquency institution. Barrett’s pioneering leadership style in
relation to the delinquent is best characterized as transforma-
tional. Viewing the home school as a “moral hospital/’ the word
wayward, although popular vernacular during the time, was
never used by the school even though it does appear in the early
media [Aery 1915: 602; An Industrial School… 1913; Schools for
Wayward Girls 1916; Daniel 1931:68].
Admissions and Intake
All residents were admitted to the home school on referral from
the State Board of Welfare. Ultimately, all girls admitted were
considered incorrigible and without other placement options in
the community. In addition to Harris Barrett’s cottage, the
superintendent’s residence and three other cottages were on the
campus of the industrial home school—Federation Cottage (the
farmhouse part of the initial purchase) and the Hanover and
Virginia Cottages, built with additional state appropriations
[Aery 1919: 473-474]. Virginia Cottage was used for the intake
and admissions process. Upon arrival, each girl was assigned to
Virginia Cottage for social assessment: “I require them to tell me
the whole truth about their past. . . when I know everything, I
understand better how to help” [Daniel 1931: 61]. Then, starting
with a clean slate, a peer system with Big Sister assignments was
used to help each resident learn the school’s expectations. After a
ten-day period of instruction about the rules and regulations,
girls were given demerits for lapses in behavior, personal ap-
pearance, and work habits, and negative points were accumu-
lated. Table 2 shows the marking system.
Wilma PeebiGS-Wilkins 153
TABLE 2
Barrett’s Behavioral Marking System (Demerits)
Behavior
Escapes
Insubordination
Stealing
Lying
Impudence
Insclence
Disrespect
Disobedience
Quarreling
Discourtesy
inattention
Laziness
Disorder
Uncleantiness
Fighting
Carelessness
Demerits
All Credits
300-1500
150
150
150
150
150
25-100
50
10
10
50-200
10
50
150-200
10
Source: Barrett’s Seventh Annual Report, cited by Daniel [1931:69].
The school operated on an honor system, with each girl
working toward becoming an “honor girl” wearing the “white
dress/’ and being promoted to Federation Cottage, the highest
of the cottages. Discipline at the home school was strict, with
team groups consisting of ten residents assigned a team lieu-
tenant and a captain to monitor behavior. School matrons fol-
lowed up on any necessary disciplinary action. In addition to
the demerit system, silences were also used as a form of dis-
cipline. A biographical account of Barrett by Sadie Daniel men-
tions, without giving descriptive details, a “Thinking Room”
for the “development of moral strength” [Daniel 1931: 68]. One
is left with the impression that the so-called “thinking room”
was some form of isolation resembling “quiet rooms” used in
psychodynamic forms of therapeutic treatment for children
who lose control.
154 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV, #1 • January-February
Preparation
The goal of the industrial home school was to help each girl gain
self-control and develop home-life skills in preparation for inde-
pendent community living. The home school, like other educa-
tional programs for African American girls, was focused on
domestic sciences and household skills. Preparation for jobs ac-
cessible to African American women was a programmatic goal
and concentrated on social role adaptation in the face of racial
segregation and oppression; well into the 1950s, the majority of
African American women were employed as domestics. Educa-
tional preparation paralleled the public school curriculum
through grade eight, and the academic content was supple-
mented with other opportunities such as programs to promote
English-proficiency skills. Religious training, crop harvesting,
and household management were all part of the vocational edu-
cation program. Applied agricultural training was instituted on
the basis of two rotating teams, one of farm girls learning to work
the farm and the other of house girls learning household man-
agement. A supply-demand approach was used because house-
hold domestics were more easily placed. Like contemporary chef
school or culinary arts training programs, the residents actually
prepared the dirüng table and meals. Neighbors in the commu-
nity helped subsidize the school by giving the residents laundry
and sewing work. Such community services no doubt strength-
ened Barrett’s relationship with the neighbors.
The curriculum also included appreciation for nature and
pleasurable use of leisure time, such as bird watching, plant
growing, and a range of sport, theater, and other organized recre-
ational activities. “Clean, straight living” [Barrett 1926:357] could
be considered the hallmark of the institution. Patriotism and
responsible citizenship were stressed, even though the residents
often expressed skepticism in the face of differential treatment,
segregation, and oppression. As in the segregated public schools,
Negro History Week was observed and celebrated during the
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 155
second week of February. The purpose of this observance was to
instill racial pride and to teach residents about the accomplish-
ments of successful African American men and women.
Several other prevailing themes that characterize a humanis-
tic but structured, kind, and caring learning environment are
identifiable in descriptions of the home school’s pedagogy and
day-to-day operations. Highly valuing and taking pride in her
education at Hampton Institute, Barrett was committed to trans-
mitting to others the lessons she learned there. The principles of
the Golden Rule were applied at the school, and behavioral ex-
pectations were applied both to persormel and to residents. As
one might anticipate, attendance and staff shortages were an
administrative concern. Personnel were expected to be commit-
ted, efficient, and trained, with “sane judgment, kind hearts, and
the ability to direct intelligently” [Daniel 1931: 70; Davis 1920:
364]. Cooperation from residents was enlisted by not embarrass-
ing or humiliating any of the girls. Each girl was accepted, given
the chance to start over, and treated kindly [“Hampton woman
honored” 1916]. Open communication and free expression were
supported by impromptu “open forums” for group discussion,
as requested by the residents. “Character training exercises is-
sued by the National Association of Child Welfare (Child Wel-
fare League)” [Daniel 1931: 67] were also used and there were
group discussions and problem-solving sessions based on life
course simulations.
Parole
Girls were honorably released from the institution after success-
ful completion of parole, which was possible after two years of
satisfactory performance. Home school residents could be pa-
roled to employment situations under supervision in either Afri-
can American or Caucasian homes, or to their own families. The
investigation process described by C.C. Carstens was carried out
by an application and screening process that eventually included
156 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV. #1 • January-February
investigation and approval of homes by the state welfare depart-
ment. After approval and a thorough explanation of a resident’s
needs and the supervision requirements, a contractual agreement
was signed between the Industrial School and the employer fam-
ily. Each resident was required to send two dollars of her earn-
ings back to the home school. A bank account was established for
each girl. Initially, one dollar went into her bank account and the
other dollar was credited to the institution until costs associated
with a clothing allowance purchase for parole were recovered.
Afterwards, all the money went into the resident’s account and
the resident left the institution with money when officially dis-
charged. In addition to written communication between Barrett
and the residents, monthly reports were required from the indi-
vidual responsible for the parolee. If the resident had difficulty
adjusting, more contact between the home and the school was
required. Early on, Barrett began to see the need for a parole
officer to do close follow-up supervision.
Paroling residents to their own homes was less frequent. So-
cioeconomic and envirorunental circumstances caused concern
about the residents’ vulnerability to prostitution and other ave-
nues to illegal income. Barrett expressed the need for child welfare
advocacy for low-income families as a deterrent to delinquency.
Discharge
After two years of successful parole, the residents were dis-
charged after a graduation or closing exercises. After a 14-year
period, 33% of the residents were discharged because they were
no longer minors, about 42% were discharged after successful
parole, 2% of the residents had died, and not even a half percent
of the girls successfully ran away (see table 3).
Anecdotal accounts do suggest parole recidivism and resi-
dents with poor health status. These factors, coupled with admis-
sion during the late teens and the inability to comply consistently
with the rules of the system, likely account for the 33% of the
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 157
TABLE 3
Admission Outcomes, 1915-1929 {N = 823)
Outcome
Discharged after parole
Discharged due to majority age
In community school
Died
Transferred to:
Hospitals for feebleminded
Piedmont Tuberculosis Sanatorium
State Board of Welfare
Ran away, still at large
Paroled under supervision
Source: Table is a modification of statistics reported in Daniel [1931 :
Number of Girls
343
272
100
20
20
2
3
4
59
77].
residents who stayed in the institution and were released when
they became adults.
Contemporary Implications and Conclusions
This article examines one historical response by the African
American community to the exclusion of African American chil-
dren from tum-of-the-century child welfare services. As Barrett
[1926:355] noted:
Rendering service, climbing to a higher plane of citizen-
ship, and uplifting those farthest down was what the
women of the Virginia Federation had in mind when they
started out to establish the Virginia Industrial School. At
that time there was no place except the jail for a colored
girl who fell into the hands of the law, so there was no
question about thé need for such an institution.
Today, one of the prevailing concerns in the child welfare
system involves the overinclusion of African American and other
minority children in the existing forms of out-of-home care. Juve-
158 CHILD WELFARE • Vol. LXXIV, #1 • January-February
rule detention is sometimes the orüy available recourse for Afri-
can Americans from low-income families, who should instead
receive outpatient therapy, adequate child care, or sufficient fam-
ily preservation services.
The considerations associated with the entrapment of minor-
ity children in out-of-home placements extend far beyond the
juvenile justice system and expand to the entire child welfare
system. Certairüy, many of these considerations are marüfesta-
tior\s of unemployment, poverty, the breakdown of the family
structure, and other life circumstances associated with oppres-
sion and social and economic injustices. For these reasons, it is
the philosophical response to oppression described in this histor-
ical account that has the greatest relevance for contemporary
child welfare services.
Several prevailing themes of equal importance are notewor-
thy in this example of internal social reform within the African
American commuruty:
• Collective responsibility and self-development as well
as external commxmity involvement and interracial co-
operation
• Description of life circumstances and advocacy for the
needs of children
• Utilization of the existing knowledge base about the
needs of children and quality child welfare services
• Collaborative efforts of the public and private sector to
promote new service initiatives
• Employment of trained personnel for humane and
skillful child welfare interventions
• Persistent and consistent concern for the quality of care
• Instilling children with values tHat promote responsible
citizenship and social responsibility
• Development of personal and racial pride by means of
programs that preserve racial heritage and promote
social justice
• Dedication, commitment, and concern for others
Wilma Peebles-Wilkins 159
The contemporary crisis in youth services is complicated by
the increasing prevalence of drugs, gang involvement, and vio-
lent juvenile crimes. As the child welfare system continues to
seek innovations, current initiatives for African American chil-
dren should be informed by the past. The present account sug-
gests that, at a minimum, quality child welfare services for the
African American community should involve the training, hir-
ing, and continued professional development of all child welfare
workers by means of such opportunities as those available in the
Title IV-E training grants. Communities that still have a shortage
of African American and other minority social workers should
develop aggressive efforts to ensure the inclusion of these work-
ers in hiring and training efforts. Diversity training and promo-
tion of culturally sensitive assessment and intervention strategies
should be included in supervision and staff development. Social
support network analysis and the inclusion of these networks in
child welfare service plans are also important goals [Thompson
& Peebles-Wilkins 1992; Tracy 1990]. •
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