|
6
<br /> NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No.1024-0018
<br /> (8-86)
<br /> United States Department of the Interior
<br /> National Park Service
<br /> National Register of Historic Places
<br /> Continuation Sheet
<br /> Section number 8 Page 8 North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls
<br /> Orange County,NC
<br /> North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (NCFCWC), founded in 1909,was one of
<br /> twenty-eight NACW federations in 1914. NACWC membership had by then grown to fifty thousand,
<br /> distributed among over one thousand clubs. Members partnered with African American and white
<br /> philanthropists, churches, businesses, and charitable and fraternal organizations to subsidize programs
<br /> and institutions that met community needs.6
<br /> The North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs (NCFWC), established in 1902, frequently
<br /> collaborated with its sister African American organization. By 1918, approximately seven thousand
<br /> white club women orchestrated initiatives throughout the state under the leadership of president Kate
<br /> Burr Johnson. NCFWC's Social Service Department successfully advocated for the creation of the
<br /> State Home and Industrial School at Samarcand Manor, a Moore County reformatory for delinquent
<br /> white girls that opened in 1918. The organization supported the founding of a similar institution for
<br /> young African American women through political lobbying and financial contributions.
<br /> Beginning in 1919,NCFCWC president Charlotte Hawkins Brown led a concerted campaign to
<br /> construct such a reformatory. In a series of newspaper appeals and public addresses, she emphasized
<br /> that delinquent African American girls were particularly vulnerable and woefully underserved by
<br /> public welfare programs. The institution would provide academic and vocational instruction in a safe
<br /> and nurturing environment,thus imbuing the young women with the skills they needed to succeed.8
<br /> The timing was opportune, as it coalesced with the North Carolina General Assembly's mandate for a
<br /> statewide juvenile court system and county public welfare boards that year.
<br /> Brown, a highly regarded educator,was the founder and head of Palmer Memorial Institute, a private
<br /> school in Sedalia that had served African American youth since 1902. Her management experience
<br /> was critical to the nascent reformatory's success. The NCFCWC also benefited from guidance
<br /> provided by leaders of similar institutions. Brown and other NCFCWC members visited Virginia
<br /> Industrial Home for Colored Girls, established in 1915 by the Virginia State Federation of Colored
<br /> Women's Clubs and led by Janie Porter Barrett.9 Brown recruited her colleague Mary McLeod
<br /> Bethune,who had in 1904 established Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro
<br /> Girls (Bethune-Cookman University since 2007) in Daytona Beach,Florida,to solicit donations for the
<br /> 6 Scott,"Most Invisible of All," 16-17.
<br /> 7 Clara I.Cox,ed., The North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs Yearbook, 1917-1918(High Point:North
<br /> Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, 1918),78-79;"Negro Club Women Commended,"Asheville Citizen-Times,April
<br /> 25, 1926,p.50.
<br /> 8 Charlotte Hawkins Brown,correspondence, 1919,NCSBPWI,Box 163;"State Reformatory for Negro Youth,"
<br /> Asheville Citizen-Times,November 3, 1919,p. 10;Charlotte Hawkins Brown,"To the Colored Women of North Carolina,"
<br /> Charlotte Observer,May 23, 1921,p.6;"Federation Raises Thousand Dollars,"Daily Advance,August 8, 1922,p. 1;
<br /> "Campaign for Salvaging Wayward Colored Girls,"Charlotte Observer,November 3, 1922,p.3;"Colored Women Back
<br /> Industrial Home Plan,"Asheville Citizen-Times,March 22, 1924,p.8.
<br /> 9 Charlotte Hawkins Brown,correspondence, 1921,NCSBPWI,Box 163.
<br />
|