Janie Porter Barrett

Janie Porter Barrett (née Porter) (August 1865 – 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. She was also the founder of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.

Barrett was born in Athens, Georgia on August 9, 1865. Her mother Julia was a former slave. Barrett's father's name is unknown. However, he was thought to be Caucasian because of his fair skin.

The Skinners, a Caucasian family, hired Barrett's mother as a live-in housekeeper and seamstress. The Skinners pampered Barrett and educated her along with their own children. Along with an education in literature and mathematics, Barrett was exposed to privileged and refined people. Her childhood was atypical of the African-American community of the time.

Barrett's mother married a railway worker and lived with him while still working for the Skinners, but Barrett continued to live with the Skinners. Mrs. Skinner wanted to become her legal guardian so that she could send Barrett to a school in the northern U.S.A. where Barrett could live as a white person. Julia vetoed this plan and sent Barrett to the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, where she would live as a black person in a black environment.

Barrett had never lived among African-Americans before attending the Hampton Institute. She also had to do manual labour for the first time at the Institute. Hampton emphasized vocational education, and women were trained in morality and housekeeping in preparation for careers as wives or domestics. Barrett gradually adapted to the system at the Institute and she was especially influenced by a novel about a cultured and advantaged woman similar to herself who devoted her life to social service. While at Hampton, she began to volunteer for community projects that helped people. Barrett trained as an elementary school teacher at the Institute. The Institute 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.

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