Janie Porter Barrett
Written by Stefanie Golberg
Source: NYPL Digital Collections
b. August 9, 1865 | d. August 27, 1948
A leader in the principles that defined the modern correctional educational movement, Janie Porter Barrett dedicated her life to social reform and social justice, envisioning the correctional system as a place of fostering relationships, trust, and community.
Janie Aurora Porter Barrett was born in Athens, GA to Julia Porter, an African American domestic servant and seamstress; the name and race of Janie’s father remain unknown. She grew up in Macon, GA where her mother worked for the Skinners, white northerners that treated Janie as if she were a member of their own family. When Julia Porter married and moved into her own home, Janie remained in the Skinner home. The Skinner family offered to send Janie to school in the north, where she might have passed into the white world, but her mother turned it down. Instead, Julia sent her daughter to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, the first of the vocational schools for freed people.
Porter Barrett graduated from the Hampton Institute in 1884 and taught for several years in rural Georgia. In 1888, Porter Barrett moved on to teach in Lucy Craft Laney’s Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, an academically ambitious school for black students providing traditional liberal arts courses in addition to vocational training. Upon returning to the Hampton Institute in 1889, Porter Barrett married fellow Hampton graduate Harris Barrett, a bookkeeper and, in time, a businessman.
As opposed to settling into the Black bourgeois community, Porter Barrett formed a sewing class for the community girls.This prompted the formation of other classes and, perhaps more importantly, the Locust Street Social Settlement. Built on the Barrett’s land, this institution was dedicated to the black community in Hampton, holding clubs and classes focused on mothering, cooking, gardening, and rug weaving, to name a few. The Locust Street Social Settlement provided opportunities for communities of practice (Wenger 1998). The clubs provided a communal structure for informal learning and a community that nurtured pro-educational and pro-social identities.
Porter Barrett’s life and work were dedicated to young African American girls. She sought to bridge the gap between the nurturing environment available to her own children and the troubling conditions in which most African American children were struggling to grow up. Encouraged by the National Association of Colored Women (established in 1896), Janie helped found the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1908 to take up this cause. With the support of African American communities within the state as well as a small group of white Virginia women interested in Black education, enough funds were raised to purchase a farm in Hanover County to build the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls. After Porter Barrett quelled objections from residents near the proposed site, the school opened its doors for the first time in January 1915.
The school was built on Porter Barrett’s intention to help young African American girls embody 19th century female values and develop Christian character. A structured rewards system was used in lieu of punishments to emphasize the role of the institution as a home as opposed to prison. Students were required to be clean and were taught agricultural and household skills so they could support themselves as farm workers or domestic servants until they established their own homes. Porter Barrett trusted her students, and was committed to helping them learn not only a skillset but learn their worth as human beings.
Porter Barrett also chaired the National Association of Colored Women’s Executive Board and received the William E. Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes in 1929. In 1930, she was invited to the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. She remained continuously innovative, emphasizing training in citizenship and the importance of civic duty. Though the state assumed control of the Industrial School for Colored Girls in 1920, Porter Barrett remained superintendent until her retirement in 1940. Two years after her death in 1948, the school was renamed the Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls, remaining a correctional training academy up until its closure in 2005.
Though there was a constant lack of resources at the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, Porter Barrett remained a visionary. Though a largely agricultural program, she supported high academic standards and certifications commensurable with schools for white children; she fought tirelessly to give young African American women an education on par with that of white public schools in this era of segregation. Instead of corporal punishment, banned by the school, Porter Barrett diminished bad behavior by keeping the young girls busy, helping them learn to govern themselves.
Porter Barrett was equally adept at communicating with local African American communities and white northern philanthropists. This unique ability to work with white women in particular was likely facilitated by her upbringing. Acutely aware of the deep-seated racism and segregation of her day (much of which still remains present in today's society), Porter Barrett vehemently advocated for collaboration across racial lines.
Perhaps most profound was Porter Barrett’s understanding of the continued support needed upon leaving the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls. Her vigilance extended to both the former students and their caretakers to whom they were released. This structure of support is a simple but salient component of re-entry, one which is still severely lacking from today's correctional system.
Porter Barrett “emerged on the scene at a time when her people had almost nothing, as a result of hundreds of years of systematic brutality,” yet she was determined to create social reform and fight for social justice (Muth et al. 40). She was an exceptional correctional educator who dedicated her life to giving the next generation of African Americans a way to rise in the world through “plain living”, high-level thinking, cleanliness, and educational and vocational training.
Sources
Muth, Bill et al. “Janie Porter Barrett (1865-1948): Exemplary African American Correctional Educator.” Journal of Correctional Education, vol. 60, no. 1, 2009, pp. 31-51.
Scott, Anne Firor. “Janie Aurora Porter Barrett (1865-1948).” Library of Virginia, https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.php?b=Barrett_Janie_Porter.
Wenger, Étienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press, 1998.