Agenda - 10-03-2017 - 4-a - Endorsement of Proposed National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the Efland Home (NC Industrial Home for Colored Girls)

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5 NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No.1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 7 North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls Orange County,NC Section 8. Statement of Significance North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (NCIHCG)meets National Register of Historic Places Criterion A for its statewide significance in social history and African American ethnic history. Beginning in late 1919,prominent educator and North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs' president Charlotte Hawkins Brown of Palmer Memorial Institute led a campaign to sponsor a reformatory for African American girls. The North Carolina General Assembly had established a statewide juvenile court system that year and sentencing often mandated reformatory placement. However,the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare did not operate a reformatory for African American girls until 1944, leaving private entities and religious and fraternal organizations to subsidize rehabilitation efforts. Brown and other club leaders garnered support from black and white chapters of the Federation of Women's Clubs,philanthropists, churches, businesses, and charitable and fraternal organizations to fund NCIHCG's construction and operation in the west Orange County community of Efland. The facility,which comprised a cottage and farm, admitted its first residents in October 1925 and provided academic instruction as well as agricultural and domestic skills training for up to twenty youth at a time. NCIHCG served a statewide constituency and was one of only ten comparable institutions for African American girls throughout the United States in 1930. Despite the demonstrated need for such a facility, administrative and financial challenges resulted in the reformatory's closure on March 15, 1939. The period of significance begins with the cottage's 1925 completion and continues to 1939. North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls History Prominent African American women including Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Frances E. W. Harper, Josephine St.Pierre Ruffin, Harriet Tubman,Mary Church Terrell, and Margaret Murray Washington led efforts to combat disenfranchisement during the Jim Crow era. With other activists, community leaders, and educators,they founded the National Association of Colored Women(NACW) in 1896. The organization consolidated the National Federation of Afro-American Women,the Women's Era Clubs of Boston, and the Colored Women's League of Washington,D.C. Members promoted initiatives to ameliorate disparities in child care, education,housing, medical treatment,prisons, social welfare, and transportation. NACW's mantra, "lifting as we climb,"recognized the uphill battle that African Americans faced in a segregated culture.5 NACW incorporated as the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) in 1904. Supporters created statewide associations with local chapters to facilitate NACWC's mission. The 5 National Association of Colored Women's Clubs,"Who Are We,"http://www.nacwc.org/aboutus/index.html (accessed January 2017);Anne Firor Scott,"Most Invisible of All:Black Women's Voluntary Associations,"The Journal of South History,Vol. 56,No. 1 (February 1990), 12-13.