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The Calhoun Colored School and Community Self‐Help: 1892–1945
Denise Davis‐Maye and Tonya E. Perry
This article examines the 1892 establishment and consequent operation of the Calhoun Colored School. The privately funded school and settlement house, founded as a result of efforts of an ethnically diverse group, including Booker T. Washington, Charlotte R. Thorn, and Mabel Dillingham, is an exemplar of community building and self‐help efforts in southern African American rural communities during and subsequent to the Progressive Era.
There is an abundance of literature that discusses the contributions of European Americans to the development of primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions for Americans of African ancestry (Thorn & Dillingham, 1892; Hartshorn, 1910). There is less discussion, however, of how African Americans worked in partnership with European Americans to bring these institutions to fruition. During the period following Reconstruction, African American “race” men and women worked cooperatively with various entities to forge the way for underserved, ignored, and forgotten communities to have their needs met.
Like their counterparts in other southern states, newly emancipated African Americans in Lowndes County, Alabama, received little support from their European American neighbors. Though Alabama’s state government established a school for the countyʹs European American citizens, the state failed to provide public education for African Americans until 1913. Instead, small African American church congregations established schools for children living in their communities. Typically, these schools were staffed by untrained but tenacious teachers. These teachers had determined to read despite discouragement and strict laws prohibiting it (Washington, 1893a).
There existed philosophical differences about the type of education that would best serve African Americans communities. This great educational debate among African American intellectuals continued for many years (Neverdon‐Morton, 1989). One philosophical camp espoused the need for moralistic education aimed at elevating the character of “vagrant African Americans” and poor European Americans (Turner, 1902). This moralistic education model was supported by a cadre of African American intelligentsia, including Professor Charles H. Turner of Clark University.
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Turner outlined several virtues as essential to the uplift of morally deficient African Americans—“manners of a gentleman, cultured homes, business honesty, thrift and Christian morality” (Turner, 1902, pp. 164–165). The competing philosophical argument originally espoused by Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institute and later by its alumnus Booker T. Washington emphasized the acquisition of industrial skills over social acumen (Neverdon‐Morton, 1989; Washington, 1903). According to Washington (1903), industry‐focused education would provide emancipated African Americans with the tools to contribute to the economy and to own property. This would ultimately allow them the “opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the higher cultivation of the arts,” which, Washington (1903, p. 16) believed, could be achieved only through hard work and the consequent freeing of oneself to experience leisure. The formalized focus of African Americansʹ education on the acquisition of industrial skills would come to be known as the “industrial training and education model”—an approach which coupled moral guidance with industrial training (Washington, 1895).
A discussion of the Calhoun Colored School in Lowndes County, Alabama, requires some antecedent discussion of the focus on industrial training, its advocates, and its opponents. It also requires a discussion of the roles of several individuals whose backgrounds were distinctively different. The following discussion traces the development of the Calhoun Colored School along with the direct or indirect involvement of four individuals: Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the president of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, who sowed the seeds for industrial education for African Americans; his protégé Booker T. Washington, who was one of Armstrong’s strongest and most eloquent supporters; and two prominent New England, European American women, Charlotte Thorn and Mabel Dillingham, who were strongly influenced by both Washington and Armstrong. To complete this research, the authors relied almost exclusively on primary data. Some of these primary data have been printed or published, such as The Booker T. Washington Papers (1972–1987). Other primary sources include documents published while the school was being established and throughout the Progressive Era. We also examined primary data from public archival holdings such as deed and map books from Lowndes County, Alabama, and surrounding areas.
Industrial Training and Education: The Hampton Model
In the decade following 1880, industrial training/education was
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identified as the most efficient method to promote racial order, political stability, and economic prosperity in the post–Civil War South (Franklin & Anderson, 1978; Hartshorn, 1910). This approach was promoted by Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute president Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Hampton Institute was founded primarily to train African American and Native American teachers for the American South (Franklin & Anderson, 1978). The school’s mission was to develop industry, build character, and to instill practical knowledge and Christian ethics and ideals. Armstrong likened African American students to a “savage people” who “are not like dumb cattle; yet their life is little better than that of brutes because the moral nature is dormant” (Armstrong, 1914, as cited in Franklin & Anderson, 1978, p. 66).
While Armstrong (1914) argued that enslavement and the “habit of unpaid labor” acquired during that period of degradation saved the African American race from further “moral ruin,” African American leaders understood that this so‐called “moral ruin” was in fact the product of 250 years of bondage (Du Bois, 1894; Washington, 1889; Washington, 1892). Washington disagreed with Armstrong’s contention and argued that
the greatest injury slavery did us, as a race, was to deprive us of the opportunity to exercise the little executive power we might have had. . . . For 250 years we have been taught to depend on somebody else for food and clothing, for shelter, and for every move we made in life. (Washington, 1896, p. 193)
Though Armstrong and Washington disagreed on the source of the problem, they did agree that industrial training coupled with moral modeling were the solution. For Washington, industrial education involved teaching students how to make water, air, steam, and other forces of nature work for them (Washington, 1895).
Prevailing School of Thought on African American Progress
This pivotal period also led to a perceived and promoted division among African American leaders. The two divergent positions on the advancement of African Americans were identified as the Du Bois and the Washingtonian schools of thought. The Du Bois school was named after W. E. B. Du Bois, a scholar, sociologist, and civil rights activist who was a proponent of “classical” humanities education, political activism, and the idea of creating a group of trained, learned African American leaders who could guide their people to prosperity and intellectual freedom—“the
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talented tenth.” The Washingtonian school, or the Bookerites, were followers of Booker T. Washington, founder and president of Tuskegee Institute. Contrary to Du Bois’ position, Washington and his supporters argued that industrial training was the most proficient type of education for newly emancipated African Americans.
Du Bois and Washington were touted as arch rivals; yet, according to correspondence between the two, they shared a mutual respect. Du Bois even applied for and was offered a position at Tuskegee Institute, which he declined for a more lucrative offer from Wilberforce University. Public disagreements between the two were ignited by Washington’s renowned speech at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, in which Washington proposed that African Americans abandon immediate goals of achieving social equality in the South and concentrate instead on being educated to assume work in the industrial arena—a philosophy with which Du Bois vehemently disagreed (Du Bois, 1894; Washington, 1895).
Thorn, Dillingham, and Washington: Introduction to the Black Belt
Both schools of thought attracted large followings and permeated thinking and attitudes for decades. Washington’s position was embraced by the dominant community, and it was the Washington school that fueled the establishment of Alabama’s Calhoun Colored School. In addition to Washington, major players in the school’s establishment included Charlotte Rogers Thorn and Mabel Dillingham. Thorn and Dillingham were both middle‐class New Englanders from prominent families.
Charlotte Rogers Thorn was from New Haven, Connecticut. Her father, Samuel Gilbert Thorn, was a navy veteran who owned a successful investment house. Based on the Thorn genealogy Web site, Charlotte was the eighth documented generation. She was described as unmarried and possessing a keen mind for math. There is no record of her academic preparation. She taught at Hampton from 1888 to 1892 (Thorn, 2008). During that time, she met and befriended Mabel Dillingham, a native Bostonian.
Dillingham and Thorn heard Washington deliver a speech at a Hampton Institute conference in 1891 in which he discussed limited financial and educational opportunities available to African Americans in the “Black Belt” region of Alabama. This region of the southern United States was so named because of the rich, dark, fertile soil for which it was famous. Immediately following this meeting, Dillingham, Thorn, and
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Washington became fast friends (Calhoun School, 1965). Like Washington, Thorn and Dillingham adhered to Armstrong’s ideology. The three shared the same philosophical connection, which would set the stage for their cooperative work in extending the Hampton Model to the Black Belt. During the months that followed, Thorn and Dillingham corresponded regularly with Washington regarding the needs of the Black Belt region of Alabama. Dillingham and Thorn sought Washington’s counsel about which area in Alabama had the most pressing deprivation and educational need. Washington directed them to Lowndes County, a rural area in central Alabama from which Washington had received solicitations for help three years earlier (Washington, 1891).
Lowndes County
Rural African Americans understood that they had to take their fate into their own hands. As part of their effort to determine their own destiny and to engage in “self‐help,” they invited Washington to the town of Calhoun in Lowndes County in 1888. They trusted Washington as an African American and as an ally who would provide both direction and protection. Calhoun’s African American residents sought Washington’s help at a time when they were being confronted with rampant atrocities of lynching and rapes. Through his discussions with African American leaders, Washington began to identify possible supporters in both the African and European American communities (Washington, 1889). Washington described Lowndes County as an area with some of the most repressed educational and economic systems in the country (Thorn & Dillingham, 1892; Washington, 1894). Yet, Lowndes County offered access to a rail system that was critical to the area farmers’ transport of their crops to coastal markets. Farmers usually saw the railroads as a panacea for their economic growth, allowing them to produce larger crops and to get them to market much more quickly.
Washington (1889) assessed the state’s rural schools, noting that they were open for approximately three months per year, apparently in accordance with the harvest calendar. He also described the average rural teacher as unqualified for the position. He compared the $15.00 spent annually to educate each European American child in Massachusetts to the $0.81 spent on each African American child in rural Alabama. Having witnessed racially motivated violence firsthand, economic disenfranchisement, and the poor educational opportunities that characterized the lives of Lowndes County’s African American residents,
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Washington solidified his resolve to create an institution dedicated to providing the county’s children with quality education.
Securing Land for the Calhoun Colored School
By the spring of 1891 Washington located available land owned by a man who was thought to be relatively sympathetic to the causes of African American residents. After spending a year soliciting funds and developing plans, in the fall of 1891 Dillingham, Thorn, Georgia Washington—a young alumna of Hampton Institute—and B. T. Washington visited Calhoun, a town with 2,700 African Americans and 100 European Americans. Calhoun was located approximately 28 miles southwest of Montgomery, in Lowndes County, Alabama. They met with citizens at the Old Ramah Church near Calhoun. Thorn and Dillingham (1894) wrote of the scores of women, men, and children in tattered clothing who came via horseback or mule and wagon or endured a 10‐mile, or more, walk. More than 300 African Americans came to meet with the group (Bacon, 1892; Thorn & Dillingham, 1894; Washington, 1891). As Freedman (1999) notes, there was a “pervasive value placed on learning” among African Americans even though it existed in the “face of extraordinary threats and punishments” (p. 3). Enslaved Africans would routinely acquire literacy skills and transfer them to others. So eager about the prospect of an education were the Calhoun residents that they contributed a total of $250.00 to the school building efforts and pledged a total of $500.00 at the initial meeting. Because they were routinely bilked of their earned money and crops, the Calhoun citizens wanted the funds entrusted only to Washington, as they had little trust in the banks and the European American landowners in general. Despite their expressed desire to offer a free education, Thorn and Dillingham advised the crowd, based on Washington’s instruction, that tuition would be charged for school attendance at the rates of $0.25, $0.35, and $0.50 based on grade level, as well as an additional annual $1.00 entrance fee (Washington, 1891).
At Dillingham and Thorn’s request, Washington discussed the purchase of 10 acres of land with N. J. Bell, one of the area’s largest landowners and most successful merchants. Washington assured Bell of the proposed school’s focus on moral uplift and industrial education before Bell agreed to sell 10 acres for the Calhoun Colored School and an additional 10 acres for Thorn and Dillingham’s personal use at $25.00 per acre. Interestingly, the typical cost for comparable land in the area was approximately $10.00 to $18.00 per acre (Washington, 1891).
The practice of charging African Americans exorbitant prices for goods
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and services was not uncommon, and where the transfer of land was concerned, there was even more apprehension and vigilance. In many communities campaigns were mounted to prevent the sale of land to African Americans (Lamon, 1977). When land was sold to African Americans, it was generally of little value per acre (Du Bois, 1906, as cited in Higgs, 1982). Bell’s willingness to sell land for use by African Americans was probably looked upon with ambivalence. Yet, it was an opportunity for him to increase his profits, perhaps rid himself of land that was not very valuable for farming, and at the same time ensure that there remained a steady pool of farm laborers in Lowndes County as out‐migration was in the rise. Bell, nonetheless, assured Washington that the land was at a premium because it was located near a railroad depot.
Based on a county deed book dated February 20, 1892, Thorn and Dillingham were the co‐owners of 10 acres adjoining 10 acres co‐owned by Calhoun, Bigloe (the school board president), Thorn, Dillingham, and others, which was purchased from Bell at $250.00 each. The deed was corrected on April 21, 1904, to show Calhoun, Bigloe, Thorn, Dillingham, and others as the owners of 20 contiguous acres.
In a private note to Washington, General Armstrong’s successor, Hollis Burke Frissel (1891), registered his concern for the feasibility of Dillingham and Thorn’s endeavor. He questioned Dillingham’s fervor and consistency, noting that she was impulsive and her attention fleeting. Because of his concern, Frissel felt that someone should oversee their work. To that end, he requested that Washington and Frederick N. Gilman, Hampton Institute’s treasurer and a man who “look[ed] at things more coolly than she [Dillingham] is likely to do,” take on the oversight role (Frissel, 1891, p. 161). Gilman died shortly after his assignment to oversee the establishment of the school. As a result of Washington’s support, his conviction in the power of industrial education, and the joint efforts of Dillingham, Thorn, Georgia Washington, and residents of Calhoun and Letohatchee (a town located approximately 10 miles south of Calhoun), the Calhoun Colored School was established in October 1892 (Thorn & Dillingham, 1892; Washington, 1892). Using funds donated by supporters of General Armstrong, including Thomas W. Higginson of Boston and John Bigelow of New York, community members provided the skill and manpower to build a small school building and a teacher’s cottage, which served as a residence for Dillingham and Thorn (Thorn & Dillingham, 1892).
Washington had estimated that there would be approximately 150 students (Washington, 1891). His prediction of the communities’ involvement proved to be an underestimation of the Calhoun residents’
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desire for education. The school was opened with two industrial and four academic teachers and 300 students. According to Thorn and Dillingham (1894), only 100 of the students were literate. The students’ parents paid $360 in tuition and another $176 in support. The small school house was inadequate, leaving one of the teachers to offer instruction to 50 of the students in a church building nearly a mile from Calhoun’s campus (Thorn & Dillingham, 1894). By the end of the first school year, the campus included a second “school‐house” and a residence for the male teachers.
The Challenges
Despite Thorn and Dillingham’s affiliations with Washington and the physical presence of Georgia Washington, both African American and European American community members were overtly suspicious of the intentions of the two northern women. According to Washington (1894), the African American citizens could not conceive that anyone, especially two white women, could be interested in or concerned with their welfare. One Lowndes County citizen wrote of northerners during Reconstruction, calling them “arrogant carpetbaggers” who were “swarming over the county”; she characterized them as ignorant of the southern culture and of the “Negroes” who possessed “native wit, [and] common senses and [a] rich fund of loyalty” (Richardson, 1936, p. 7). Lowndes County’s European American citizens could not understand what these “uncultured” European American northerners were trying to “fix,” given their lack of knowledge of the context of southern lives. With the exception of four prominent families, Dillingham and Thorn were treated with disdain by European Americans in the county, rich and poor alike. Rumors were spread about the reasons Dillingham and Thorn ventured into rural Alabama. These rumors were as extreme as the presumption that the two women had run away from their husbands and were hiding in Alabama (M. J. Gardner, personal communication, November 9, 1996; A. D. Reese, personal communication, February 12, 2002; Washington, 1894). Dillingham died in 1894, only two years after the school’s opening. Her brother, a Harvard seminarian, Rev. Pitt Dillingham, took her place as the co‐principal and chaplain of the school and served with Thorn through 1909.
Pleas for financial and service‐related support went out to Washington and Thorn’s supporters throughout the country. Bacon (1892) expressed concern related to the board’s ability to raise funds. She quoted Alexander Cromwell’s charge to those concerned:
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I wish to see large numbers of Christian women, women of intelligence and piety, women well trained in domestic economy, women who combine delicate sensibility and refinement with industrial acquaintance—scores of such women to go South, to enter every Southern State, to visit “Uncle Tom’s” cabin, to sit down with “Aunt Chloe” and her daughters, to show and teach them the habits and ways of thrift, economy . . . gather them into mothers’ meetings and sewing schools. . . .We cannot postpone the reformation to another generation. (n.p.)
The preceding statement is laced with paternalistic, racist attitudes. Unfortunately, this was the nature of many of the progressive and reconstructive efforts in the South. Even Thorn and Dillingham (1894) espoused similar beliefs:
Our idea in regard to the work is not to increase the number of scholars, but to bend all our energies toward giving the three hundred we have the best possible chance, and to make all the work thorough as far as it goes. There is no question, but, that the great need in this part of the country are industrial training and good primary and secondary schools. The eagerness of many of the Negroes for a “higher education,” regardless of everything else, is certainly a danger to be guarded against. (p. 5)
This was the age of philanthropy. Several of the most prominent private philanthropist funds contributed to the Calhoun School. In general, large financiers agreed with the Calhoun Colored School’s mission and also had confidence in Washington’s advice. Over a 50‐year period the school’s contributors included the Rockefellers, the Slater Fund, the Carnegie Foundation, and Calhoun Clubs founded in New York, Philadelphia, and Connecticut with the sole purpose of managing fund‐raising efforts for the school. The prominent African American Alabamian Elizabeth Ross Haynes made regular monetary contributions to the school. By 1913 the Calhoun Colored School boasted an endowment of $95,749.25.
The school received a great deal of regional support because of the faculty’s efforts to support the lifestyle patterns around them. Despite the frequent suggestion that life as it was encountered in Calhoun early on was somehow “primitive” due to the capacity of the residents, the faculty refused to ignore the lack of access to resources. The 1913 principal’s report discussed reinforcing continued use of materials native to the area with
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which the residents were familiar. Materials indigenous to the region were used in the creation of furniture, mats, and baskets, among other household items and farming implements.
Thorn and Dillingham (1894) agreed that industrial education of the boys should begin first with agriculture. They believed that the majority of their male students would likely become farmers. Thus, the school should contribute to creating a high level of competence and enthusiasm for that vocation. Despite Thomas Patterson’s (1894) complaint that the land on which the school rested had become dilapidated as a result of continuous planting of cotton, the school benefited greatly from the Black Belt’s rich soil. Patterson used the land to teach methods of soil enrichment and land cultivation. The students were able to coax the land to yield cotton and abundant crops of fruit, vegetables, and maple syrup. They raised dairy and beef cattle, lambs, and hogs. By growing their own corn and hay, they were able to develop a “self‐supporting farm” demonstration for the community.
By the end of 1896 J. W. Lemon reported on the agriculture division’s emphasis on “improving the soil” to improve the crop harvest. His aim was to “regain the land in the most economical way” (p. 22). Lemon’s term “regain” referred to the depletion of the soil that resulted from its overproduction and overfertilization. Soil exhaustion was a serious problem that influenced the economy of southern plantation owners. Lemon also taught students the most efficient and effective ways to tend their livestock. They planted meliotas grass, sorghum, corn, cowpeas, Irish potatoes, turnips, onions, cabbage, sweet potatoes, vines, and eggplant, which served to feed both man and beast “from May through September.” They also planted and harvested sugarcane, oats, artichokes, rye, wheat, and clover, subsequently moving the school toward self‐sufficiency in the areas of food supplies. This was significant since many farmers neglected to plant food on their land in favor of more lucrative crop products. Furthermore, this knowledge base was shared with the community through monthly farmer conferences, with workshops on care of stock, composting, plowing, land preparation, and planting that enabled others in the area with similar soil to produce food for their families as well as cash crops. By 1913 the school’s farm began to compete with the community’s farmers and substantially decreased the need to purchase food items from these farmers.
The Goal: Landownership
Reflective of the post–Civil War South, this period in Lowndes County was one of resettlement, migration, and confusion among both the African
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American and European American citizens of the county. Although emancipated and no longer subject to the direct domination of former plantation owners, African Americans were disenfranchised and were expected to survive using limited resources that were still largely controlled by European Americans. In 1889 Washington estimated that there were six million African Americans in the South. Additionally, he reported the ratio of African Americans to European Americans in Lowndes County as being 6 to 1. According to Berlin, Miller, and Rowland (1994), 80% of the African American rural dwellers in Lowndes County lived in one‐room cabins, where there could be 10 relatives residing at any given time. Most African Americans had little land or resources but had to care for a network of extended kin including aging parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, orphaned cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, and children of neighbors. Further, in areas such as Calhoun, 80% of African Americans lived on rented land and mortgaged their land and crops for food and other subsistence items (Washington, 1889). Across the South, those who remained in farming communities but held no land were forced to rent and enter into contracts of tenancy or sharecropping. Those contracts would be constructed in a manner that would keep individuals indebted to the landowners for extended periods of time and in some cases for lifetimes (Washington, 1889).
Lemon, a Hampton alumnus and agricultural teacher at Calhoun, suggested that nonownership of land perpetuated little interest in the crops and poor cultivation of the land on the part of the African American sharecropper. The 1894 principal’s annual report documented the farmers’ resistance to enrichment of the soil for fear of increased rental fees. In addition to the educational opportunities that the school provided, the 1896 Farmers Conference, and its resulting impact, was probably the most significant legacy of the Calhoun School. Fourteen men raised and deposited $10 each into the newly established Calhoun School Land Company—a land‐purchasing program (Lemon, 1896). The 14 men also made provision for their less fortunate neighbors by allowing smaller incremental deposits until the sum of $10 was reached, at which point full membership into the land company was granted.
In order to implement a successful land‐purchasing program, Thorn and Dillingham again sought Bell’s assistance. They proposed the purchase of more land to sell to African American farmers. This time, however, Bell refused. Bell believed that if his renters (sharecroppers) discovered that his land was for sale, they might not be as motivated to tend the crops, thus causing his yield to decrease. Undaunted, Thorn solicited the assistance of
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another prominent Lowndes County landowner, Edward D. Chestnutt (Hartshorn, 1910). Chestnutt, despite being aware that his decision would be considered unpopular among his European American counterparts, agreed to sell the Calhoun School 1,300 acres of land (Hartshorn, 1910; Thorn, 1921). A land bank, with eventual holdings of 4,081 acres, was formed (Hartshorn, 1910). Northern philanthropists and financiers provided Calhoun’s residents with loans with interest rates of 8% (Hartshorn, 1910). The lots were sold to African American men in tracts of 40 to 60 acres. A small number of African American women were sold 10‐acre tracts. Gender‐based restrictions regarding land acquisition were somewhat consistent with the patriarchal system rampant throughout the South—a system in which European American men maintained institutionalized dominance over African Americans as well as European American women. Given the subordinate status of women, both African American and European American, the fact that African American women were extended the opportunity to acquire land, despite the imposition of restrictions, was in many respects progressive and consistent with the reciprocal nature of African American male‐female power dynamics. E. Franklin Frazier (1939) underscores the unique realities of the African American male‐female dynamic in The Negro Family in the United States, in which he suggests that the historical struggles of African American women had not cultivated within them “the spirit of subordination to masculine authority by either economic necessity or tradition” (p. 102).
In line with the schoolʹs landownership goals, Lemon identified his major objective as the training of the boys in farming and showing them the “way” out of crop‐mortgage farming, one of the “curses of the Black Belt” (Dillingham & Thorn, 1896). Pitt Dillingham (1896) estimated that three years’ rent in “sharecropping” was equivalent to the cost of purchasing a farm and a home. The establishment of the landownership and economic development programs was likely one of the most important in its empowerment of Calhoun’s African American citizens. Dillingham (1896) suggested that landownership provided Calhoun’s African American citizens with a new understanding of Christianity by giving them an understanding of heaven in the “here and now.” Lemon (1896) wrote, “The colored man of Calhoun wants a home as never before and is willing to sacrifice for it” (p. 25). In the first 13 years of the landownership initiative 92 deeds were secured by 85 African American residents (Hartshorn, 1910). Those sales of lots continued at least through 1958, based on the deed books on record with the Lowndes County probate judge.
While the Calhoun School continued to acquire land, some problems
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persisted. For example, as late as 1930 the roads leading to the school were almost impassable for over a third of the year. During the winter of 1929 Thorn and Yoder (1930) reported that the only way to get out of Calhoun was either by “mule back” or by train. Furthermore, the lack of accessible roads made the transfer of products to market nearly impossible for the African American farmers of Calhoun. As was generally the case, a communal spirit prevailed and created an impetus for change. Dillingham (1896) acknowledged the contribution that “colored people themselves, the fathers and mothers, and the students in particular, especially the older ones living on the grounds, have done to make Calhoun possible” (p. 11). In the spring of 1930 Calhoun students, teachers, and residents cooperatively graded and widened a road (currently identified on maps as Lowndes County Road 37) to connect with a paved county road (currently identified on maps as Alabama Highway 21) with the agreement that the county would complete the paving work by surfacing it with gravel (Thorn & Yoder, 1930).
Life at Calhoun
Mary Jenkins Gardner, a second‐generation Calhoun alumna who attended the school from 1939 to 1943, recalled how her maternal grandfather, Erin McCray, purchased approximately 200 acres of land through the Calhoun Land Company. Gardner’s mother, Octavia McCray Jenkins, attended the Calhoun Colored School from 1912 to 1917 before leaving to attend Hampton Institute in 1920. Gardner recounted family stories of “Miss Thorn” visiting her grandfather’s home to discuss community issues. Gardner further recalled that Thorn was a loving and well‐respected woman in the African American community (M. Gardner, personal communication, November 9, 1996).
Gardner reflected on her experiences at the Calhoun School. She was in attendance at the school during its final year as a private school, 1943. She reported attending chapel every morning and Bible study weekly. Female students were required to spend their final or senior year as a boarder on campus. Moreover, they were responsible for domestic duties, such as washing clothes, cooking, and cleaning for the male students and teachers. As early as 1896 (Lemon, 1896), the lower level of the schoolʹs industrial building was used as a laundry and included wooden washtubs, scrubbing boards, portable boilers, ironing boards, and flatirons. The goal of the “laundry” division of the industrial department was to prepare the young women to use the tools that they would most likely have to use in their own
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homes. The “laundry” division handled the washing and ironing for the faculty, staff, and boarding students. These tasks included laundering coarse farm clothing as well as more delicate clothing such as “shirt tails,” which required starching and ironing.
The male students were responsible for agricultural and maintenance duties. According to M. J. Gardner (personal communication, November 9, 1996), to graduate from Calhoun meant that “you were distinguished and dignified. Calhoun graduates were as respected as Tuskegee graduates.” Gardner spoke of reading, speech, writing, and basic math skills being refined when a student completed studies at Calhoun. Gardner remembered there being a strong work ethic within the county. Fathers and husbands were “good providers” and valued family and religion, which played an important role in these families’ and communities’ lives. Gardner noted that the community’s faithfulness was strengthened and reinforced by the Calhoun School. The school, as Washington indicated in a speech in 1889 before a Women’s New England Club, represented a road out of forced subordination and a pathway to landownership and self‐sufficiency (Washington, 1889).
Gardner’s depictions of the Calhoun School are corroborated by Thorn in the school’s 1921 annual report. With financial contributions from the Calhoun residents and northern philanthropists, and despite continuous economic hardship, the Calhoun School prospered and was recognized as a model of industrial education (Hartshorn, 1910; Thorn, 1921). By 1921 the school boasted an influential board of trustees, including Paul Revere Frothingham and N. Penrose Hallowell, two of Boston’s elite citizens.
The needs of the community dictated the overall program of the school. Calhoun offered courses through 10th grade in history, geography, English, math, science, music, laundry science, agriculture, blacksmithing, cobbling, carpentry, and charge water systems (plumbing and irrigation). Early on, older residents of Calhoun expressed an interest in receiving some form of “remedial education” (Thorn & Dillingham, 1894), so adult education classes were established and offered in the evenings. Farmers’ conferences were offered and attended by African American and European American farmers from across the central region of the state. Calhoun graduates operated two extension campuses in Sandy Ridge (approximately 10 miles from Calhoun) and Lee Place (approximately 4 miles from Calhoun). The central campus offered holiday programs and celebrations to which the entire community was invited.
Under the auspices of the U.S. Bureau of Education, J. J. Jones (1917) conducted a study of “private and higher schools for colored people in the
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United States” (p. 58). Based on his visit to the Calhoun School, Jones stated that the school was “highly” effective in character development, using industrial and agricultural training fitted to the needs of the community. He was especially impressed with the multiracial group of teachers, 15 African American teachers and 12 European American teachers, all of whom were alumni of reputable schools.
The school employed a full‐time nurse who treated students and community residents. In addition to her general health care duties, the school nurse provided first‐aid training, a nutrition club, and training in practical health issues, including birth control (Thorn, 1921). Annie Dove Reese, a 1936 Calhoun alumna, stated that the nurse’s services were sorely needed and that she often provided medical care beyond the intent of her training. Reese recalled that many students trusted the nurse’s care at a level beyond that which they placed in the sole physician to whom they had access. As a spirited 96‐year‐old, Reese (personal communication, Feb. 12, 2002) laughingly shared that “whether you had the Croup or cramps, he [the doctor] gave you the same nasty‐tasting stuff.”
The Calhoun Colored School went on to boast a highly qualified academic staff and to be recognized internationally. According to Jones (1917), the staff included graduates of Atlanta, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, William and Mary, and Barnard College, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the annual reports, visitors came from as far away as China, Japan, Scotland, England, Korea, and various African countries (Thorn, 1913, 1921).
As documented in the Calhoun School’s 36th Annual Report (Thorn & Yoder, 1928), Butler R. Wilson, a speaker for Calhoun’s 1928 commencement exercises, spoke of the Calhoun legacy. He reported the import of the multiracial “cooperative work of two groups untroubled by social difficulties or fear of race mixture” (p. 17). Based on his assessment of other African American and European American educational institutions in the county, Wilson stated that the Calhoun School stood out as a standard of quality education.
The Calhoun Legacy
The ultimate mission of Calhoun was to train students to pursue higher education at Atlanta University and Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes before returning to Calhoun to build homes, start families, and contribute to the overall uplift of the community. This was sometimes a hard sale due to the pull of opportunity and the hope of a greater level of respect in places
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such as Connecticut, Detroit, and New York. This, according to Reese (personal communication, February 12, 2003), contributed to the demise of the Calhoun “promise.”
Charlotte Thorn died in 1932 at the age of 75, having served as principal of the Calhoun School for 40 years. She is buried on the school grounds. For the years immediately prior to and following Thorn’s death, the school’s already limited resources began to diminish. The stock market crash and Depression of the 1930s could be held partially responsible for this. Additionally, with the availability of public education for African American Alabamians, fewer foundations felt the need to continue to provide support (U.S. Department of Interior, 1976). In 1943, the Phelps Stokes Fund decided that the school needed to become self‐sufficient and discontinued its funding. The board of trustees considered ideas as varied as making the school a teaching laboratory for the Alabama State Teachers College or incorporating the school under the Episcopal Church. According to the U. S. Department of Interior (1976), on July 1945 discussions among Alabama’s governor, the presidents of Alabama State Normal Teaching College and Tuskegee Institute, and the Calhoun Trustee Board treasurer resulted in Calhoun becoming a public school under the auspices of the Lowndes County Board of Education. By 1945, although manual skills continued to be taught, Calhoun, like her postsecondary counterparts, had begun to focus on classical humanities and was considered an elite school by many in the community and abroad. Courses such as Latin were taught as early as 1929. Local African American residents were extremely fearful, according to Gardner (personal communication, November 9, 1996), that the school’s educational standards would be lowered. The other public school that had focused on industrial training was regarded as inferior.
Some New York–based foundations continued to provide financial support for the school through the 1950s. Jesse Jones, the treasurer of Calhoun’s trustee board in 1945, assured Calhoun’s contributors that the 1,250 acres that Calhoun owned could be sold only to African American farmers. Thus, the Calhoun landownership legacy continued, at least through the late 1950s.
The Calhoun Colored School made an impact on the development of secondary education for African Americans in the rural South, as well as on the social climate in Lowndes County. The preexisting strengths of the county and its residents, coupled with new opportunities provided by the school, enabled people who had been disenfranchised for nearly three centuries to rise above their circumstances and even beyond the visions of the school’s founders.
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Implications
According to Carlton‐LaNey et al. (2001), empowerment has always involved a process of increasing personal and interpersonal power so that people can take action to improve their lives and contexts. The founding of the Calhoun School and its legacy reflect the possibilities that can extend from empowerment‐based practice. Simon (1994) has outlined nine tenets of empowerment‐based practice. These principles were reflected in the founding of the Calhoun School and the evolution of educational, economic, and social uplift that became its legacy. Simon’s principles not only demonstrate applicability to the Calhoun School and its legacy; they also suggest implications for contemporary empowerment‐based practice in disenfranchised communities across the nation (Armfield & Carlton‐LaNey, 2001).
Principle 1: Fashion programs that are responsive to the expressed needs and preferences of the target community. Community interventions that are driven by needs identified by the community and devised with target communities are poised for success; such interventions benefit from community ownership and awareness of community culture. Washington’s efforts in Lowndes County, including the founding of the Calhoun School and its attendant economic enterprises, came as a response to the needs of the community as voiced by the members themselves. For more than three years prior to his initial visit to Lowndes County, community members had requested his assistance in addressing barriers to local reform.
Principle 2: Ensure the accessibility of programs and services to the target population. Essentially, community‐based programs must offer services that the community can access. Washington’s selection of Calhoun as the site of the industrial school was not by happenstance. Washington described Lowndes County as an area with some of the most repressed educational and economic systems in the country (Thorn & Dillingham, 1892; Washington, 1894). Most of Lowndes County’s African Americans lived in Calhoun. Furthermore, these residents were poor and imprisoned by educational, economic, and racial disenfranchisement.
Principle 3: Foster committed collaborative problem‐solving between the worker and the target community. Washington’s commitment to racial uplift through industrial education appealed to a broad audience. His eloquence and passion drew Thorn and Dillingham into the collaborative relationship. Once in Lowndes County, Washington and his protégés shared a plan to respond to the community’s needs. The Lowndes County residents showed their willingness to commit to the process from the outset. Through
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Washington, Thorn, and Dillingham’s outreach, the community continued to respond collaboratively. These people, who had so little, pooled their meager resources to contribute money to support the construction of the school. Driven by mutual respect, a working relationship among all parties was forged.
Principle 4: Recognize and capitalize on the strengths of the target community. The Lowndes County residents had a reservoir of strength such as agricultural prowess, industry, perseverance, faith, and community cohesiveness—all of which were used to develop the school. Effective community‐based interventions incorporate recognition of community members as experts in addressing the challenges their community faces. As demonstrated by the Calhoun community, when community members are given the opportunity, they can be quite resourceful in creating and implementing strategies to manage the challenges they face.
Principle 5: Implement collaborative interventions that are dynamic and responsive to the evolving needs of the target community. As the community’s needs evolved, so did the Calhoun School’s programs. The agricultural program and the landownership program all adapted as the community’s needs changed. Further, as the national educational thrust for African Americans began to focus on Classical studies, the Calhoun School began to adapt its curriculum to assure that its students would be competitive. Because individuals, families, and communities are dynamic, community‐based programming must provide services that can effectively address the emerging needs of its constituents.
Principle 6: Ensure that leadership development is an integral element of practice and policy development aimed at enhancing a given target community. The cultivation of regenerative leadership was a fundamental operating principle of the Calhoun Model. Graduates were expected to financially support the school, acquire university training, and ultimately continue the mission of education among African Americans that the Calhoun School started.
Principle 7: Be cognizant of the incremental nature of community change. The emergence of the Calhoun Colored School and its attendant economic enterprises was accomplished over a 40‐year expanse. The Calhoun School had periods of wealth interspersed with periods of financial struggle. The mission, however, was never abandoned. Community‐based practice tenets suggest that it is critical that short‐term and long‐terms goals are identified with the recognition that community change requires patience, persistence, and creativity.
Principle 8: Accurately assess one’s existing resources and seek needed
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supplemental resources to support the target community in meeting its goals. Preceding any architecture of a community development plan, a thorough appraisal of existing human, financial, and physical plant resources must be completed. Washington and his protégés were masterful collaborators. Acknowledging the existing power brokers in the community, they initiated a relationship with prominent landowners in Lowndes County to ease their introduction into a deeply racially divided area. Washington was aware of the community members’ human and financial capital as well as their strong self‐help philosophy. He was confident that they would contribute their wherewithal to build the school.
Principle 9: Harness local knowledge to contribute to the general good. The Calhoun Model rested on Washington’s sensitivity and understanding of the strengths, skills, resources, and challenges of African Americans in rural southern communities. His meticulous documentation of the school’s development and numerous writings and speeches about the school’s impact were ways to spread awareness of the mechanics and benefits associated with establishing industrial schools in similar communities. Neverdon‐Morton (1989) asserts that while the replication of the Calhoun Model in other rural areas did not meet with the same level of success as it did in Lowndes County, “where the experiment was tried, a greater sense of community did develop; more important, the residents were able to imagine and initiate an alternative to the conditions under which they lived” (p. 100). In essence, the greater good must be served by the outcomes produced as a result of community development programming. By infusing indigenous knowledge, human capital, skills, and products, one can reinforce the import of the community to the plan and promote greater commitment and participation on the part of the larger target community.
The founding of the Calhoun School is a reflection of the ways in which communities may be enhanced through empowerment‐based practice. Through the leadership of Washington, Thorn, and Dillingham and in collaborative partnership with the residents of Lowndes County and concerned others, students and members of the community were aided in strengthening their capacities to use their environment for the betterment of themselves, their families, their community, and the county‐at‐large. The Calhoun School and its legacy serve as exemplars of the outcomes that may be yielded from empowerment‐based community practice.
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Denise Davis‐Maye, PhD, LCSW,, is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama.
Tonya E. Perry, PhD, LGSW, is Associate Professor, Graduate Social Work Program Alabama A&M University, Normal, Alabama.
The authors would like to thank Mrs. Mary G. Hardy, Ms. Annie Dove Reese, and Mrs. Geraldine Gipson and the other community members and Calhoun alumnae who opened their homes and libraries to the authors to assure an accurate telling of their story. Any correspondence related to the article may be addressed to Dr. Denise Davis‐Maye, Auburn University, Haley Center 7018, Auburn, Alabama 36849.
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