"Janie Porter Barrett" [August 91865-August 27 1948]

Was an American social reformer educator and welfare worker.She established the Virginia

Industrial School for Colored Girls, a pioneering rehabilitation center for African-American female delinquents.Janie was also the founder of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.She was born in Athens Georgia.Janie mother Julia was a former slave.Her father is unknown,but because of her fair skin it is thought that he was white.Her mother worked as a live in housekeeper and seamstress for the Skinners, a cultured white family.The Skinners pampered Janie and educated her along with their own children.Along with an education in literature and mathematics,Janie was exposed to privileged and refined people.Her childhood. Was a typical of the African-American community of the time.Janie mother married a railway worker and with him while still working for the Skinners,but Janie continued to live with the Skinners.Mrs. Skinner wanted to become her legal guardian so that she could send Janie to a school in the northern U.S.A. where Janie could live as a white person.Julia vetoed this plan and sent Janie to Hampton University in Hampton,Virginia,where she would live as a black person in a black environment.She never lived among African-Americans before attending  Hampton University.Janie also had to do manual labor for the first time at the University.Hampton emphasized vocational education,and women were trained in morality and housekeeping in preparation for careers as wives or domestics.She gradually adapted to the system at the University and she was especially influenced by a novel about cultured and advantaged woman similar to herself who devoted her self to social service.While at Hampton,Janie began to volunteer for community projects that helped people.Janie trained as an elementary school teacher at Hampton.The University taught her lessons "in love of race,love of fellow-men,and love of country,"inculcating her with altruistic and patriotic values,and a sense of duty towards her race.Janie graduated from the University in 1885.She worked as a teacher in a rural school in Dawson,Georgia and then at Lucy Craft Laney's home and Industrial Institute in August Georgia.She taught night school classes at the University from 1896 to 1899.In 1899 she married Harris Barrett,the University's cashier and bookkeeper.They had four children.Soon after she married,Janie began holding an informal day care and sewing class at her home in Hampton.The class grew rapidly into a club that tried to improve both home and community life.It was formally organized as the Locust Street Social Settlement in October 1890.It was the first  settlement organization for African-Americans in the U.S.A. In 1902 the Barrett's built a separate structure on their property to house the Settlement's activities,which included clubs,recreation,and classes in domestic skills.They received assistance from Hampton University students and faculty,who also found several philanthropist-who were mostly from the northern U.S.A.-to fund the settlement.By 1909 the settlement had clubs for children,and senior citizens.Committees supervised these clubs and Janie concentrated her efforts on large-scale annual events.In 1908 Janie helped to organize,and was the first president of,the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Club.The federation engaged in wide range of social services.It helped the provision of environments that were appropriate for children,rather than their being place in institutions like jail and almshouses.For several years after 1911,the Federation gradually raised money for the establishment of a residential industrial school for the large number of  young African-Americans  girls that were being sent to jail.They planned to pay in full for land after five years of fundraising.In 1914,Janie read in a newspaper that an eight year old girl had been sentenced to six months in jail and she immediately appealed to the judge in Newport News,Virginia to send the girl to the Weaver Orphan Home in Hampton,where Janie was living at the time.The judge reluctantly released the child into her care.The Federation quickly raised $5,300 and bought a 147 acre farm in Hanover County, Virginia and chartered their center.The center was a rehabilitation center for African-American female delinquents and was called the Industrial Home for Wayward girls.It opened in January 1915 with 28 students.After several name changes the center became known as the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls.With advice from many prominent social workers and especially from the Russell Sage Foundation,the school developed a program that stressed self-reliance and self-discipline.The school had academic and vocational instruction,visible rewards,"big sister"guidance,and close attention to individual needs.In 1915 and 1916 the Virginia Assembly appropriated more funds for the school,and Janie was named secretary of the board of trustees.Harris died about this time.Janie also turned down a job offer as dean of women at Tuskegee University.She became superintendent at the Industrial School.Janie was deeply involved in every aspect of the Industrial School's program.She personally managed the parole system by which girls who demonstrated sufficient responsibility were placed in carefully selected foster homes.These girls also were given jobs and were supported by follow-up services such as ministerial guidance, a newsletter called The Booster and personal letters.The school operated on an honor system and did not use corporal punishment.A special featured of Janie's work was that each resident had their own bank account,so that upon discharge each resident had some money to take with them.Janie excelled in her role at the school.Her childhood had equipped her to deal with socially important white women who controlled the trustee board and who were able to influenced state legislators to appropriate funds for the school.She said:"You know we cannot do the best social welfare work unless,as in this school,the two races undertake it together."Jane was held in such a high regard that she could demand the future white employers of her students treated them humanely.While the Industrial School was under Janie's supervision in the early 1920s,the Russell Sage Foundation rated it as one of the best five schools of its kind in the U.S.A. at the time its enrolment was about 100.The school became a model of its type,with many successful rehabilitation's of young women who were able to find employment and get married after being released.The school was known especially for its cultivation of characters and morals.In 1920 the state of Virginia assumed financial responsibility for the school.The state and the Federation shared the supervision of the school until 1942,when it became supervised by the Virginia Department of Welfare and Institutions alone.In 1929 Janie received the William E.Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes.In 1930 she took part in the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection.She served as the president of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs for twenty-five years.She chaired the executive board of the National Association of Colored Women. for four years.Janie retired in 1940.She died in Hampton.In 1950 Janie training school was renamed the Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls.It became racially integrated in 1965.The Virginia Industrial School exists today as the Barrett Learning Center.