Janie Porter Barrett

• Janie Barrett
• Born: August 9, 1865
• Died: August 27, 1948

Social welfare activist, was born in Athens, Georgia, to former slaves, Julia Porter and a father of whom little is known. Julia Porter worked as seamstress and housekeeper in Macon, Georgia, for a Mrs. Skinner, who had moved south from New York. Janie Porter played regularly with the Skinner children and was reared in material comfort and in a cultured and genteel atmosphere. So much did she feel at home there that she remained with the Skinners when her mother married a railway worker and moved out. Janie Porter was deeply torn at the age of fifteen when Mrs. Skinner wanted her to pass for white in a Northern school and Julia Porter wanted her to be educated with blacks. She finally went to the Hampton Institute at Hampton, Virginia, following her mother’s wishes.

Among the Hampton students, most of whom were from rural backgrounds, and apparently less cultivated than she, Porter at first felt estranged but quickly adjusted. She read All Sorts and Conditions of Men by Walter Besant, whose heroine decides upon a life of serving others, and was inspired, after her graduation in 1884, to teach in the sharecropping area of Dawson, Georgia. A year later she held classes in Augusta, Georgia, at Lucy Craft Laney’s Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. After three years of teaching night classes at Hampton Institute, she married Harris Barrett, cashier at the institute, in 1889. They had four children: May Porter, Harris, Julia Louise, and Catherine.

Barrett soon made her home into a place of hope for the less fortunate. Out of her weekly meetings for young women developed the Locust Street Social Settlement, which Barrett founded in 1890. It was the first such undertaking in Virginia and one of the first for blacks in the United States. In 1902, the Barretts used funds they had set aside to improve their own home to construct a separate building on their property for the project. Through Hampton Institute, Barrett had contact with northern philanthropists who provided money to furnish and maintain the settlement; Hampton students instructed people of all ages how to sew, care for children, raise livestock, and cook.

As the initial president of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, which she had helped found in 1908, Barrett encouraged involvement in social service. Encountering in her work an eight-year-old girl who had been jailed, she became convinced that that the state needed a rehabilitation center for black girls in legal difficulty. After the federation had raised the money to open the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, that center became a reality, in 1915, on a 147-acre farm in Peake, eighteen miles north of Richmond. Barrett became secretary of the board of trustees.

After her husband’s death, Barrett refused an offer from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to become its dean of women and instead became resident superintendent at Peake. Concerned over protests by Peake residents against the school’s proximity to their homes, and by a resulting delay in state funding, she committed herself to the school completely. Barrett obtained a regular state subsidy and began to raise money for residential cottages from northern and local donors.

Barrett helped create a national reputation for the school, increasing its enrollment to 100. Although at first reluctant to leave her home “to live in a dormitory and eat from this plate with a tin fork,” she created more of an atmosphere of a community than in similiar centers—resulting partly from her own ability to convey her personal understanding to each girl. By the mid-19208 the Russell Sage Foundation was to rank Barrett’s center among the country’s five best institutions of its type. It was a place without locks, bars, or physical punishment. The administration looked closely at the individual behavior of each resident and treated her accordingly. Clubs were organized to reinforce an honor system, and an open forum in which students raised grievances facilitated this approach, which was based partly on advice from social-welfare experts, including Hastings Hart of the Russell Sage Foundation. The program reflected ideals of progressive reform, in which humane social work was becoming increasingly important. Instructors in eight grades taught educational and vocational skills, including home-making. Two years of commendable deportment could lead to parole. Barrett kept in touch with those who were discharged. They were sent to foster homes chosen by the staff and received ministerial support as well as the school publication.

Barrett received the William E. Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes in 1929 and participated in the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930. She was chairman of the executive board of the National Association of Colored Women from 1924 to 1928 and also served as an executive board member of the Richmond Urban League and as a member of the Southern Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Interracial action to achieve the goals of social welfare was one of Barrett’s strong commitments; the school was managed by a biracial board with a white woman, Mrs. Henry Lane Schmelz, as its first president. Barrett retired in 1940 and went back to her Hampton residence. In 1950, two years after her death from diabetes mellitus and arteriosclerosis, the institution to which she had devoted more than two decades of service was renamed the Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls. Barrett was buried in Hampton’s Elmerton Cemetery following an African Methodist Episcopal service.

For biographical material see M. W. Ovington, Portraits in Color (1927); R. A. Woods and A. J. Kennedy, Handbook of settlements (1911); W. R. Hall, “Janie Porter Barrett: Her Life and Contributions to Social Welfare in Virginia,” Master’s thesis, Howard University (1954); Who’s Who in Colored America, 1941-44; and annual reports, Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls. See also Notable American Women (1971): and The Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 4 (1974).