Legacy for Learning: Jennie Dean and the Manassas Industrial School | Rita G. Koman

Background
Four years of war ravaged Virginia, the major battleground of the nation’s Civil War. Manassas Junction in Prince William County, the focal point of two major battles, was frequently traversed by the opposing armies throughout the war, each taking turns at building up supply stations to be looted and burned by their opponents as control of the land and the railway changed hands. The life once known there changed regularly, forcing county residents to adjust. Some left for other parts of the state; others simply went out to replant their crops. Most of the 118 families in the vicinity were farmers raising wheat and corn. Of these inhabitants, the 1860 census listed 548 whites, 260 slaves and 45 free blacks (1).

The Civil War and the resultant emancipation changed the status of many African Americans. Among the slave population freed by emancipation was the Dean family. It consisted of parents, Charles and Annie Dean, four children, Jane (called Jennie by her family), Ella, Mary, and Charles, Jr., and grandparents, Mildred and Ruben. They lived on land owned by Christopher Cushing near the Sudley Springs Methodist Church, attended by white people. Caught in the crossfire of many battles, the church served as a hospital for the wounded of both armies.

In mid-1865, about the same time an enterprising property owner William Fewell systematically plotted nine blocks for the village of Manassas, Charles Dean, Sr. initiated his ownership of a farm some six miles away near the former battlefield known as Catharpin (2). Charles apparently had been a house servant, for he was taught to read and write early in life in violation of state law forbidding slaves any education. We can assume that these skills were urged upon his children, of whom at least two received advanced educations. The oldest child, Jennie, received just a few months of formal learning in a very primitive public elementary school after the war. Unfortunately for the family, Charles Dean died long before he completed the purchase of his land. Not wishing her mother and siblings to be dispossessed by overzealous mortgage lenders, Jennie decided to venture into the working world of Washington, D.C., some forty miles away. She planned to save her wages and to use them to pay off the balance owed on the farm.

As a young woman of fourteen, Jennie Dean was probably the first member of her family to leave Prince William County to seek employment. The restoration of rail service from Manassas Junction made such a venture possible. Domestic work was plentiful in the city, and Dean had no problem finding jobs. Membership in the 19th Street Baptist Church connected her to a larger Washington. In addition, Dean knew well the expectations of southern whites—she was respectful, obedient, and hardworking—which endeared her to everyone and created a demand for her services. Consequently, she never wanted for work and won important friends among her employers. Within a few years, she bought the family farm and was able to contribute toward seminary educations for her sisters—all by hoarding her wages.

An astute individual, Dean observed the difficulties that befell her fellow African Americans, especially after the end of the Freedmen’s Bureau and formal Reconstruction. As her perspective matured and her finances stabilized, she played an active role in church affairs. Ultimately, she helped found a Sunday School (3).

During her many visits home, Dean noticed the absence of black churches and used her limited free time to establish Baptist missions there. These missions evolved into churches, several of which continue to operate today. Her sincerity of purpose, unfailing good nature, and consistent reputation for accomplishment convinced many black friends to join the churches and many white friends to provide financial assistance. By the mid-1880s, Miss Jennie, as she became known, began to formulate another plan (4).

Even before incorporation as a town in 1873, the hamlet of Manassas received state literary funds to build the first public elementary school in Virginia which was reserved for white children. This action was not lost on Dean. She used her missions as places to teach black children to read and write, for many of the freedmen schools established by humanitarian northerners after the war disappeared with time. Well-meaning whites recognized the educational needs of blacks by the 1880s, but were not anxious to mix the races in public schools. Nor were state monies readily available for separate black schools. But, inspired by the success of Tuskegee Institute, founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, and encouraged by her growing friendships with influential white matrons and church contacts in the nation’s capitol and Prince William County, Dean took a bold step: she decided to establish an industrial school for the black youth of the county (5).

In the spring of 1888, Dean convinced black Baptist ministers from all sections of the county to discuss the worthiness of an industrial school with their congregations. A superior, strong-willed organizer herself, Dean was highly motivated to succeed in this newest endeavor. She also appealed to every white person she knew in the county for financial support and then campaigned aggressively with her white employers in Washington, as well as their friends. She spoke informally but with devoted sincerity of her people’s needs at women’s club meetings and church fellowship gatherings. Her carefully worded pleas eventually led her listeners to introduce her to others, like industrialist Andrew Carnegie and professor-orator Edward Everett Hale. She also continued to save her own wages, diverting her resources when contributions slipped or using them to solicit matching funds from those less financially well off. Slowly, as the year advanced, momentum to establish a school grew and she began to give serious thought to a potential location (6). In trying to decide where the school should be built, Dean learned that the Hampton Brenton farm at the junction of the Southern Railroad (formerly the Orange and Alexandria line) and the main line to Strasburg (one mile from the center of Manassas) was for sale. After two years of behind-the-scenes work, a public meeting was held in Manassas in 1890 to solicit financial backing to buy the Brenton farm for $2,650. Dean’s savings of sixty dollars was added to forty dollars from a Washingtonian to show an intent to buy. Thereafter, a committee of prominent white men studied the needs of the 24,000 blacks in five adjoining counties, half of whom were of school age, and concluded that a vocational school could be put to good use in an overwhelmingly agricultural county.

Jennie Dean soon discovered that fund-raising would become a full-time endeavor. In 1892, to maintain both interest and cash flow, she organized a huge picnic dinner on the fourth of July that involved all of the county neighborhoods from as far west as Gainesville, Sudley Springs, and Bull Run to nearby Conklin and Wellington. Advertised widely throughout the county as an old fashioned picnic with singing and speeches, the response from the entire community was outstanding. Seventy-five dollars was earned selling foods ranging from ten cents to fifty cents (7).

In 1893, a school charter was written. The school was expected to serve boys and girls over fourteen years by improving their “moral and intellectual condition” through “such instructions in the Common English Branches, the Mechanical Arts and Trades, in farming, housework, needlework and other occupations as . . . shall be practicable and also useful in enabling the said youth to earn a livelihood.” Dean wished to empower young people through education to take care of themselves by learning skilled trades. The academic subjects of English, spelling, and arithmetic were taught to all students. Young men studied blacksmithing, carpentry, shoemaking, wheelwrighting and agriculture. Young women learned laundering, cooking, canning, and sewing (8). Given the geographical spread of the students, a boarding school proved a necessity. And, like the Hampton and Tuskegee models on which the school was based, boarding enabled poor students to work in exchange for tuition and linked pedagogy and practical skills. Gradually fourteen hundred dollars was raised to meet the first land payment.

Once the land was purchased, Dean obtained assistance in constructing the first school building. Emily Howland, a wealthy New Yorker active in women’s suffrage, befriended Dean at a Washington suffrage convention and agreed to underwrite the construction of the school’s first building. In return, Dean called the building Howland Hall. Meanwhile, Dean enlisted local men (both black and white) to donate skills, time, and supplies to renovate a farmhouse that came to be called Charter Cottage (9).

It was a proud occasion when the school was formally dedicated on Labor Day, 3 September 1894. Prominent local attorney, realtor, and politician, George C. Round, headed the dedication committee. He had drafted the charter approved by the Commonwealth of Virginia and would oversee the day’s formalities. Local and state politicians, judges, and black and white supporters, gathered under a newly donated American flag to hear Frederick Douglass deliver the major address of the afternoon. On 1 October 1894, six pupils came to learn. The faculty consisted of a principal and three teachers, all of whom worked only for their board the first year. Within months of its opening, the school population reached seventy-five students (10).

Until her death on 3 May 1913 at age sixty-one, Dean served on the board of trustees, as a matron in the women’s dorm, and as the major, indefatigable fundraiser. Sadly for her, Dean’s influence waned as individuals perceived to be more knowledgeable in the education profession took over the school’s direction. At the height of its existence, the campus of more than one hundred acres had a dozen buildings, all constructed from private finances and donated labor and materials, and helped train an average of 152 students per year. A prosperous farm provided food and dairy products, and made the school somewhat self-sufficient. The Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth was a private institution publicly acknowledged for its importance to the education of black youth in Virginia. As a result of Jennie Dean’s efforts and foresight, over 6,500 young black people from Virginia, the District of Columbia, and at least ten other states received an education.

In 1938, after several years of effort to gain public funding due to dire financial straits, the school was approved for public takeover by the Virginia State Department of Education. It became a regional high school serving black students of Prince William, Fairfax, Fauquier, and Rappahannock Counties. As the population of northern Virginia expanded, similar schools were built and the Manassas school became the Prince William County High School. In 1959, the county school board demolished the old industrial school buildings, replacing them with a new, large building for black day students. In 1966, the school board renamed the newly integrated school Jennie Dean Middle School. Today, this modernized building serves as the Jennie Dean Elementary School of Manassas (11).

This lesson can be used as an enrichment of a unit on Reconstruction and late nineteenth-century southern life, or it can become the focus of lessons highlighting the accomplishments of African Americans.

Stephen Johnson Lewis, one of the early graduates of Manassas Industrial School and a Trustee in the 1920s, who became a dentist in town:

“Miss Dean possessed a wonderful vision, a capacity for planning and a technic (sic) for winning friends to her causes and then making them succeed.”

“Dean was strong-willed, highly determined, devoted and willing to make many sacrifices for a school. She was a good organizer too.”

Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison and Board of Trustees member of the Manassas Industrial School for twenty years:

“I think it was her (Dean) own straightforward honesty and refusal to pretend to be anything else than what she was, a plain woman, unashamed of being a cook who made money to help the school and her people. I was much interested by the deep impression she made upon my Southern wife. There was nothing serville (sic) about her; she did not play up to or toady to the whites. She was just a plain, simple, dignified black woman with no gift of oratory and no charm beyond what I have said—her straightforwardness and sincerity . . . to win the Southern home friends to her cause first as a basis upon which to start the movement for the School, she overcame much greater handicaps of prejudice, disregard for Negroid capacity for schooling and training, intolerance and indifference as to the negro’s possibilities as a citizen of the local regions, State, and Nation, than she had to overcome in winning more liberal minded friends of the North and East.”

Richard C. Haydon, Superintendent of Prince William County Public Schools when the county School Board bought the Manassas Industrial School in 1938:

“ . . . she (Dean) had done for Negro education in this limited Northern Virginia area what Booker T. Washington had done for the nation in the field of industrial education . . . That the State (Virginia) Department of Education, upon due investigation, was willing to finance the original setup (entire campus and farm) into the State’s educational system through a loan of $20,000 from the Literary Fund to a three member County Board, constitutes another tribute to the wisdom, vision, and constructive service Jennie Dean rendered both to her community and her State. The School is considered by the State Department of Education as a pioneer in the regional high school movement.”

“All of her (Dean) life’s efforts had been directed towards a main objective: that of building for better, more productive and progressing (sic) living among her people. The establishment of missions, chapels and churches, community missionary and social service work were all preliminary steps preparatory to the main objective: . . . an educational institution for the influencing of human minds and lives . . . she taught that life is a privilege as well as a responsibility and that birth or origin have but little bearing on success or failure if the will to help one’s self is cultivated and encouraged . . . Dean’s influence went far in teaching many Southern whites in both private and public life, that an ignorant, uneducated, untrained and idle Negro youth was a direct liability to both the community and the State.”

Source of all quotes: Stephen J. Lewis. Undaunted Faith. Catlett, Va.: The Circuit Press, 1942.

Handout 2
The Manassas Industrial School, 1902-1903

Location:

This school for colored youths of both sexes is situated upon the historic battle grounds of Manassas, and is located about one mile from the centre of the town. Manassas is conveniently located on the Southern Railroad, 33 miles from Washington, D.C. There are ten trains daily. The place is elevated and healthful, and surrounded by picturesque scenery. Free from the seductive influences of a city, this school offers a rare opportunity to those desirous of placing their children under elevating and purifying influences. The farm contains over one hundred acres.

The Objects of the School:
1. To train in habits of usefulness those committed to its care, by developing them mentally, morally, and physically.

2. To teach the dignity and importance of labor, and by means of trades to perform it skillfully and with pride.

6. To make its students self-reliant, careful thinkers, thorough in their work, manly and womanly in their bearing and to cultivate habits of industry.

Trades Taught:
For Girls—Dressmaking, mending, and plain sewing, cooking, housekeeping, laundry work, poultry raising, and wood-work.

For Boys—Carpentry, farming, gardening, and blacksmithing. Wheelwrighting and other trades will be added from time to time as the school progresses.

Religious Worship:
Each day’s work is begun with devotional exercises, and each student is required to be present.

Students must attend Sabbath school, and are required to attend preaching whenever the weather permits.

The School Year of Three Terms will begin the first Tuesday in October, and end the last week in May.

Students intending to board at the school will be received the Saturday before the opening day.

Persons applying for admission to this school must be able to furnish satisfactory evidence of good character.

Students are urged to be present upon the first day of the fall term. Admission at any other time than the beginning will be allowed only in special cases.

Those entering either Academic or Trade Departments, must be able to read well in the fourth reader, write in a fair hand a paragraph or letter in simple English, with proper regard to capitalization, punctuation, and spelling; and to pass a satisfactory examination in both mental and written work, in the first four rules in arithmetic, in United States money and common fractions.

The estimated cost of books is from $2.50 to $5.00 according to classes. Books and stationery must be paid for in cash.

Each Student will be charged $10.00 a month for tuition, this will include room, board, washing, fuel and light; $4.50 of this amount may be paid by their labor. The entrance fee is $10.00.

When trade students become efficient they will receive pay for a part of their work in the shops or on the premises.

Trade students will be given an opportunity to earn a part of their expenses at common labor one and a half days each week when necessary.

Students in the manual training and literary departments attend School four or five days in each week and work for a part of their board one or two days.

Wages
Good workers may earn as much as $5.00 by working one or two days each week, but the school does not guarantee any fixed amount regardless of the value of the services rendered. Wages are paid according to value of work done. Students’ labor is accepted as pay only when it is satisfactory. When otherwise they may be suspended from school.

The earnings of students are expected to be used only to pay school expenses. If the school is indebted to any student at the end of the year or at time of withdrawal, the amount due stands to his credit and may be used by him as part payment of expenses upon his return to school within two years.

Money earned is held as a bond for the fulfillment of the purpose of getting an education at this school and can be used only when there and cannot be used for any other purpose. If a student is sent away or leaves without permission these earnings may be used to help needy and worthy students at the discretion of the Faculty of the school.

Accounts are made out and handed to the students about the first of each month; parents should require their children to send their bills home promptly that they may see what is owing to the school.

All bills should be paid in cash and within one week after the accounts are received.

Those failing to pay promptly are liable to suspension from recitation till their bills are paid, but will be required to attend religious services, drill and other exercises at the discretion of the Faculty.

All receipts for money paid the school will be handed to students to be forwarded to their parents.

Clothing
Young ladies are expected to bring rubbers and water proofs or money to purchase them, and are expected to dress plainly and neatly.

Young men are required to wear the navy blue school uniform and cap, which must be worn upon inspection and drill occasions and at all times when off the school grounds.

The school has arranged to have measures for suits taken and made at a reasonable price. The price will be from $11.50 to $12.50 per suit.

Tuition without room or Board will be charged at the rate of $2.00 a month, one-half payable in cash, balance in labor. Cash payments must be made invariably in advance.

Students will be required to furnish the following:
1 mattress, 1 pillow, 3 sheets, 3 pillow-slips, and such other bed-covering as will make them comfortable; a broom, a lamp, towels and slop pail.

Course of Study
First Year
Reading, spelling, arithmetic, language lessons, geography, penmanship, drawing, hygiene.

Manual Training: Cooking, sewing, laundering, blacksmithing, woodworking, agriculture.

Second Year
Reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar and composition, geography, hygiene, United States history, drawing.

Manual Training: Cooking, sewing, laundering, blacksmithing, woodworking, agriculture.

Third Year
English and American classics, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, United states history, history of Virginia, elementary physics, drawing, hygiene.

Manual Training: Cooking, sewing, laundering, blacksmithing, woodworking, agriculture, horticulture.

Fourth Year
English and American classics, spelling, arithmetic, (completed) grammar, civil government, physical geography, elementary chemistry, drawing, hygiene.

10:05-10:15 Phonics
10:15-10:30 Recess
10:30-10:40 Spelling
10:40-11:15 Arithmetic
11:15-12:00 Agriculture (Tues., Wed., Fri.)
11:15-12:00 Reading and Story Telling (Thurs., Sat.)
12:00- 1:30 Dinner and Recess
1:30- 2:15 Trades
2:15- 2:30 Music
2:30- 3:00 Study
3:00- 3:10 Physical Culture
3:10- 3:45 Virginia History
3:45- 4:00 Penmanship (Wed., Fri.)
3:45- 4:30 Geography (Tues., Thurs.)
4:00- 4:30 Hygiene (Wed., Fri.)

Regular Four-Year Courses Offered
I. Academic-Normal Course.
II. Agricultural Course.
III. Trades Courses in

IV. Home Economics Course including Sewing, Cooking, Laundering and Housekeeping

Because of a regrading of the work, the classes in the regular courses are now styled First, Second, Third and Fourth Years. The Junior A and Junior B classes are preparatory.

I. Academic-Normal Course
This course aims primarily to prepare teachers who shall be able to teach in the rural school. It is so designed however, that students completing the work shall be able to meet the requirements for admission to schools doing a higher grade of work. A part of the Fourth Year is devoted to practice teaching under the supervision of the instructor in Methods.

All subjects required in this course that are not explained below will be found under the Academic Normal Course.

Agronomy: A study of plants, texture and composition of the soil, preparation of the soil, drainage, etc.

Commercial Geography: A study of the human and social factors underlying the commercial and industrial organization, the commercial and industrial life of the rural community, the division of labor, the factory system, transportation and local distribution.

Farm Management: A study of “system” and the factors that enter into the acquiring of executive ability, the advantages of good management.

Land Tenure: A general study of leases, mortgages, contracts, the different systems of “holding” and papers involved in the transfer of land.

Poultry Husbandry: Care of breeding stock and eggs, incubation and care of chickens, marketing.

II. School Gardens
The school garden is a special feature of the agricultural work. Plots are rented to the students for this purpose. They pay for the seeds they use for plowing and harrowing when done by the school and all incidental expenses. A larger part of the profits derived therefrom is given to the student in the event he is able to dispose of the products. Greater than the monetary interest, however, is the development, pleasure and real knowledge that the student gets. The school gardens attracted much attention last year and promise to yield far greater results this season.

Beginning with the school year 1916-17 it is planned to make a one-year course in school gardening compulsory for all students.

III. Trade-School Course
The Trade School offers courses in Blacksmithing, Carpentry and Painting, Shoemaking and Wheelwrighting. It gives a definite, graduated course of instruction which aims to fit each student to be a thorough craftsman. While the students receive credit for productive work, the primary aim is not the financial aid but the educational value that is derived from such commercial work. The completion of Junior B or its equivalent is required.

As students will not be able to do much productive work during the first years of the course, they will need about $80 to pay their expenses each year.