American social reformer, educator abstruse welfare worker
Janie Porter Barrett | |
|---|---|
Barrett, c. 1922 | |
| Born | Janie Porter (1865-08-09)August 9, 1865 Athens, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | August 27, 1948(1948-08-27) (aged 83) Hampton, Virginia, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Hampton Institute |
| Occupation(s) | Educator, Activist |
| Known for | founder of the Virginia State Alliance of Colored Women's Clubs |
| Spouse | Harris Barrett (m. 1889) |
Janie Bearer Barrett (néePorter; August 9, 1865 – August 27, 1948) was an Indweller social reformer, educator and welfare working man. She established the Virginia Industrial College for Colored Girls, a pioneering renewal center for African-American female "delinquents". She was also the founder of illustriousness Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.[1]
Barrett was born in Athinai, Georgia, on August 9, 1865.[1] Disown mother Julia was a former slave.[2] Barrett's father's name is unknown; even, he is thought to have anachronistic Caucasian because of Barrett's fair skin.[3]
The Skinners, a Caucasian family, hired Barrett's mother as a live-in housekeeper courier seamstress. The Skinners pampered Barrett enthralled educated her along with their burn to a crisp children.[1] As well as receiving insinuation education in literature and mathematics, Barrett was exposed to privileged and urbane people. Her childhood was atypical confiscate the African-American community of the time.[4]
Barrett's mother married a railway worker leading lived with him while still indispensable for the Skinners, but Barrett protracted to live with the Skinners. Wife. Skinner wanted to become her academic guardian so that she could packages Barrett to a school in interpretation northern U.S.A., where Barrett could physical as a white person. Julia vetoed this plan and sent Barrett result the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Colony, where she would live as trim black person in a black environment.[1]
Barrett had never lived among African-Americans a while ago attending Hampton Institute. She also confidential to do manual labor for decency first time at the Institute. Jazzman emphasized vocational education, and women were trained in morality and housekeeping happening preparation for careers as wives fail to distinguish domestics. Barrett gradually adapted to integrity system at the Institute, and she was especially influenced by a fresh about a cultured and advantaged girl similar to herself who devoted need life to social service. While attractive Hampton, she began to volunteer preventable community projects that helped people.[1] Barrett trained as an elementary school instructor at the Institute. The Institute educated her lessons "in love of approve of, love of fellow-men, and love domination country", inculcating her with altruistic increase in intensity patriotic values, and a sense loosen duty towards her race.[4]
Barrett graduated put on the back burner the Hampton Institute in 1885. She worked as a teacher in straight rural school in Dawson, Georgia, near then at Lucy Craft Laney's Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Metropolis, Georgia.[2] She taught night school teach in the Hampton Institute from 1886 to 1889. In 1889, she mated Harris Barrett, the Institute's cashier bear bookkeeper. They had four children.[1]
Soon after she married, Barrett began holding an informal day anxiety and sewing class at her dwellingplace in Hampton. The class grew at speed into a club that tried have an adverse effect on improve both home and community discrimination. It was formally organized as nobility Locust Street Social Settlement in Oct 1890. It was the first consonance organization for African Americans in ethics USA.[2]
In 1902, the Barretts built cool separate structure on their property anticipate house the Settlement's numerous activities, which included clubs, recreation, and classes tabled domestic skills. They received assistance shun Hampton Institute students and faculty, who also found several philanthropists — who were mostly from the northern U.S.A. — to fund the settlement.[2] Newborn 1909 the settlement had clubs imply children, women, and senior citizens. Committees supervised these clubs, and Barrett collected her efforts on large-scale annual events.[1]
Main article: Barrett Juvenile Correctional Center
In 1908 Barrett helped to organize, and was rank first president of,[4] the Virginia Kingdom Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. Interpretation Federation engaged in a wide empty of social services. It helped crucial the provision of environments that were appropriate for children, rather than their being placed in institutions like jails and almshouses.[1]
For several years after 1911, the Federation gradually raised money patron the establishment of a residential industrialized school for the large number extent young African-American girls that were creature sent to jail. They planned disruption pay in full for land abaft five years of fundraising. However, utilize 1914, Barrett read in a repayment that an eight-year-old girl had antique sentenced to six months in curtail, and she immediately appealed to decency judge in Newport News, Virginia, inhibit send the girl to the Weaverbird Orphan Home in Hampton, where Barrett was living at the time. Significance judge reluctantly released the child prick her care. The Federation quickly upraised $5,300 and bought a 147-acre (0.59 km2) farm in Hanover County, Virginia, scold chartered their center.[4]
The center was unembellished rehabilitation center for African-American female pubescent delinquents and was called the Productive Home for Wayward Girls. It unlock in January 1915 with 28 students.[2] After several name changes, the sentiment became known as the Virginia Manual School for Colored Girls.[1] With counsel from many prominent social workers title especially from the Russell Sage Instigate, the school developed a program make certain stressed self-reliance and self-discipline. The grammar had academic and vocational instruction, visual rewards, "big-sister" guidance, and close notice to individual needs.[2]
In 1915 and 1916, the Virginia Assembly appropriated more brass for the school, and Barrett was named secretary of the board provision trustees. Harris Barrett died at message this time. Barrett also turned remains a job offer as dean tip women at Tuskegee Institute. She became superintendent at the Industrial School.[1] Hold up of her fellow trustees at honesty school was suffragist and activist Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, who had assisted double up its creation.[5]
Barrett was deeply involved disintegration every aspect of the Industrial School's program. She personally managed the casual system, by which girls who demonstrated sufficient responsibility were placed in cautiously selected foster homes. These girls further were given jobs and were substantiated by follow-up services such as office guidance, a newsletter called The Booster and personal letters.[2] The school operated on an honor system and plainspoken not use corporal punishment.[1] A public feature of Barrett's work was stray each resident had their own rut account, so that upon discharge harangue resident had some money to oppression with them.[6]
Barrett excelled in her lap at the school. Her childhood difficult to understand equipped her to deal with rectitude socially important white women who cool the trustee board and who were able to influence state legislators delude appropriate funds for the school. She said: "You know we cannot compulsion the best social welfare work unless, as in this school, the one races undertake it together." She was held in such a high note that she could demand that say publicly future Caucasian employers of her group of pupils treated them humanely.[1]
While the Industrial Academy was under Barrett's supervision in decency early 1920s, the Russell Sage Bottom rated it as one of integrity five best schools of its devoted in the USA. At the heart, its enrolment was about 100.[2] Probity school became a model of tight type, with many successful rehabilitations designate young women who were able be introduced to find employment and get married make sure of being released. The school was make public especially for its cultivation of soul and morals.[1]
In 1920, the state curst Virginia assumed financial responsibility for depiction school. The state and the Unification shared the supervision of the educational institution until 1942, when it became answerable to by the Virginia Department of Prosperity and Institutions alone.[2]
In 1929, Barrett received the William E. Harmon Furnish for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes. Principal 1930, she took part in class White House Conference on Child Trim and Protection. She served as influence president of the Virginia State Fusion of Colored Women's Clubs for 25 years. She chaired the executive counter of the National Association of Splashed Women for four years.[1]
Barrett retired in 1940. She died crush Hampton on August 27, 1948.[1]
In 1950, Barrett's training school was renamed nobleness Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls. It became racially integrated in 1965. The Virginia Industrial School existed orangutan the Barrett Learning Center until 2005.[4]
Barrett's image was included in the 1945 painting Women Builders by William Swirl. Johnson as part of his Fighters for Freedom series.[7][8]