“Saving Grace”:
Educating African American Children
through Industrial Education in Mayesville
By Dorothy Hines Datiri
In 1886, Emma J. Wilson founded the
Mayesville Educational and Industrial Institute to educate African American children. As the daughter of a slave and a native
of Mayesville, Wilson was committed to providing an intellectual, moral, and religious education to freed black families after
the Civil War. Using Booker T. Washington’s industrial education
model, the Mayesville Educational and Industrial Institute provided an academic and vocational education that merged instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic with training in blacksmithing, tailoring, and practical agricultural methods. Teaching
African American students skilled trades and knowledge of academic subjects was perceived as the solution to achieving true social mobility and economic freedom in Mayesville. Yet low rates
of student retention and uncertainty of how to develop a systematic approach for educating black children hindered the institute’s
long-term prospects. Examination of a 1920 advertising pamphlet
from the Mayesville Institute helps shed light on the philosophy
of the industrial education model, the nature of learning in this
system, and the implications of school reform.
Education in Mayesville
In 1920, the Mayesville Educational and Industrial Institute published an advertising pamphlet to help increase the percentage of
African American students enrolled in formal schooling in South
Carolina. Financed by the Christian Herald, the seven-page booklet was entitled “The Gate of Opportunity.” Used as a marketing
and fundraising tool, the pamphlet provided readers a descriptive
view of how African American children were transformed into
intellectually vibrant and economically viable young men and
women. The mission of the institute was to “give Negro youth
a liberal literacy and a thorough industrial education.” This newfound “liberal literacy” is portrayed through photographs of African American students, descriptions of a positive school culture,
and narratives of communal benefits achieved through moral and
spiritual development.
On the first page, students are pictured in formal clothes, with
polished black boots, suit jackets, and collared shirts. The pamphlet then tells the story of a group of children who eagerly walk
fourteen miles to and from school to receive a formal education.
From the “home of where only two lights may shine—one from
the tiny neighborhood church and from the wide-open portals
of the Institute,” the school is portrayed as a place of refuge from
the poor socioeconomic conditions experienced in many nearby
communities. The Mayesville Institute is described as providing a
transformative education in a place where children are welcomed,
with adequate space to meet the needs of every student.
The ideal of “liberal literacy” achieved through an indus-
Above, in the 1910 work An Era of Progress and Promise, 1863–1910: The Religious, Moral, and Educational Development of the American Negro Since His Emancipation, the buildings of the Mayesville Institute campus are described in detail, including the trades
building, a “substantial brick structure ... erected by the students in the brick-laying department.” Image courtesy of the State
Library of North Carolina.
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“The Gate of Opportunity” was published in 1920 as a marketing and fundraising tool for the Mayesville Institute. Images courtesy of Advertising Ephemera Collection—Database #A0238, Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920 On-Line Project,
John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and
Manuscript Library.
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Born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1856, Booker T. Washington served as the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal
and Industrial Institute and is remembered as an immensely influential educator, author, and advisor. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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trial education is also depicted in photographs showing a positive school culture and opportunities conducive for learning. The
Mayesville Institute was not only a place of intellectual advancement, but it also provided a foundation for the moral and spiritual development of children. The industrial education model involved daily religious services and students pledging allegiance to
the American flag placed in front of the school. A photograph of
students pledging allegiance reflects the patriotism of the children
and also draws on the democratic equality goal of educating African Americans to be productive citizens. Moral development was
an imperative to an individual’s educational progression within an
industrial curriculum. The pamphlet describes the institution as
“specializing in good sound education, mentally and industrially,
and for that reason Mayesville is helping wonderfully to improve
the moral and economic tone of a great community in which 80%
of the population is colored.” The Mayesville Institute focused on
the development of African American children who were morally astute and contributors to a positive community culture. This
portrayal was intended to invoke an emotional response from philanthropists and Christian organizations, thereby prompting the
donations that helped finance the school.
The depiction of the institute as providing an individually obtained education that contributed to a collective communal good
was another key component in eliciting philanthropic donations.
By portraying an active community relationship, the institute was
providing evidence of the benefits of such a school in Mayesville.
Classes at the institute often involved educating parents in farming methods, community sanitation, and hygiene practices, for
instance.
The uniqueness of providing an industrial education to African American children is evident from the pamphlet. This “Gate
of Opportunity” was truly a pathway for African American youth
to learn the basic skills for individual growth and sustainability
within their newfound educational freedom. And an education
at the Mayesville Institute was indeed depicted as the primary
method of achieving social mobility and economic freedom for
blacks in Mayesville.
“Little Tuskegee” and the Industrial
Education Model
Known as “Little Tuskegee,” the Mayesville Institute implemented
an educational system introduced in the late nineteenth century
by the influential African American leader Booker T. Washington.
Washington’s industrial education model played a key role in how
children at the Mayesville Institute were educated and normalized to formal schooling. The philosophy of industrial education
involved a discipline that combined academic studies and training
in manual trades. The nature of learning was significant in how
knowledge was reconstructed and how teachers and students interacted within the classroom.
The period of Reconstruction marked a sense of collectiveness among African American communities to prepare future generations for life in the post-Civil War South. In this new era, African Americans possessed a potentially significant advantage: since
they formed the core of the South’s major source of income—agricultural production—they could use their knowledge of cultivat-
ing farmland for economic gain. Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of industrial education focused on this internal commodity.
Washington considered African Americans the means of production, insisting that “the Negro can control labor in the South.”
By controlling labor and agricultural production, blacks would
receive standing in American society. This could be achieved not
with force, but with patience and virtue.
The nineteenth-century movement toward industrial education for black children created a unique opportunity for schooling
to be designed around the economic needs of the South. In 1877,
when the first general summary of statistics of education in the
southern states was made, it appeared that there were 571,506
black children and 1,827,139 white children enrolled in the public schools of the sixteen former slave states and the District of
Columbia. With the growth of schooling for blacks, the incorporation of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in 1881 reinforced the desire for African Americans in the South to acquire
literacy through a formal education. By combining training in
skilled trades with an academic curriculum, the industrial education model eliminated the educational barrier between a child and
work. A hands-on practical education allowed black youth to develop their futures while learning a manual skillset. In “Industrial
Education for the Negro,” Washington argued that “the Negro
in the South works and works hard; but too often his ignorance
and lack of skill causes him to do his work in the most costly and
shiftless manner, and this keeps him near the bottom of the ladder
in the economic world.” Keeping blacks at the bottom of the ladder would not cultivate the community, but would instead alienate the individual and bar sustainable social progress. Therefore,
Washington’s industrial education model aimed to reconstruct the
core of the South’s agricultural production.
Through depictions of students cultivating undeveloped
fields, building classrooms, and engaging in “customary schoolroom work,” among other activities, the pamphlet illustrates three
critical components of the nature of learning in Washington’s
industrial education model. First, applied learning was highly
valued. The Mayesville Institute sought to provide a purposeful
industrial education through practical application, though this
required a shift in the formal curriculum that preexisted within
the majority of white schools. As William J. Reese explains, it was
believed that black children “needed an agricultural or ‘industrial
education’ to compete for jobs, ‘avoid chain-gangs, jails, and penitentiaries,’ and stay away from the vices of the ‘madding towns.’”
The Mayesville Institute incorporated this idea in its curriculum.
African American children would be developed to provide a social
and economic benefit to South Carolina, but this required that
they be taught a hands-on approach to learning.
Another characteristic of learning at the Mayesville Institute as exhibited in the pamphlet was that it was exploratory and
student-centered. Students selected manual training classes based
on individual interest and skill level. Children were admitted at
thirteen years old and followed an open-ended curriculum that
required twenty-one hours per week in academic work during the
first three years. Coursework consisted of classes in English literacy, math, geography, psychology, philosophy, and ethics. These
core subjects laid an academic foundation for teaching trade skills
to students. Washington believed that “no race can be lifted until
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its mind is awakened and strengthened.” Strengthening the mind
provided an opportunity for the child to discover his range of
talents in manual training, and this allowed the child to select a
path for individual exploration.
The third component of the nature of learning was the promotion of moral development and belief in the dignity of work.
Though many considered the continuation of blacks working in
positions of manual labor to be a byproduct of slavery, Washington’s ideology focused on the reconceptualization of serviceoriented jobs by viewing manual trade as a professional occupation. The Mayesville Institute, in turn, imparted to students
that carpentry, blacksmithing, and dressmaking were honorable
professions for blacks in the South. Indeed, Mayesville students
are portrayed as returning to their communities and using their
industrial knowledge to rebuild neighborhoods.
Parallel Arguments to the Industrial
Education Model
The Mayesville Institute was providing a proactive solution to the
lack of formal schooling and literacy in the southern states. Yet
the implementation of formal schooling for blacks was not overtly welcomed or supported. This type of school reform appeared
daunting to many African Americans in the South. The type of
education that black children should receive was debated, and
it was questioned whether educating them would result in the
pursuit of racial dominance. The incorporation of the Mayesville
Institute and similar schools produced several unanticipated effects that changed the scope of education for African Americans.
While seeking to serve the needs of African American youth
during the period of Reconstruction, the industrial education
model received both criticism and support from white southerners. Some feared that increased literacy among black citizens
would add to the demand for equality in politics, and there
was great resistance due to the perception that educated African Americans would learn the political and economic system
well enough to advance to the status of whites. Still, other white
southerners supported industrial education, believing it prepared
blacks for employment primarily in service-oriented occupations.
The industrial education model also produced dissention
within the African American community. In particular, opponents like W. E. B. Du Bois stressed that it perpetuated the
status quo of oppression and racial discrimination. In The Souls
of Black Folk, Du Bois describes Washington as supporting the
ideology that “the Negro can survive only through submission.”
This submissiveness asks blacks to focus on limited intellectual
opportunities to seek slavery-oriented social positioning. Du
Bois contended that Washington’s focus on industrial education
helped further “the disfranchisement of the Negro, legal creation
of distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro, and steady
withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the
Negro.” Du Bois and others believed Washington’s perspective
neglected the full capabilities of the African American mind by
not focusing on their immediate progress in the South. The education of black children was believed to be a collective educational experience that centered on academic development, and
this could not be achieved within the confines of an industrial
education model.
The Fate of Industrial Education in the
New Century
The industrial education model faced opposition from white
southerners and black intellectuals whose beliefs differed in the
type of education that an African American child should receive
in the South. These challenges produced various changes in how
children at Mayesville were educated and in the overall course of
educating African Americans during this period.
Entering the twentieth century, the Mayesville Institute faced
numerous obstacles in sustaining a formal education system.
First, the institute was unable to obtain complete community
buy-in to the school’s mission. Although the reported enrollment
averaged approximately 425 students, there was sixty-five percent
dropout rate after the first year, according to a 1920 Commission
of Labor report. Thus, students were only temporarily receiving
the type of education that Washington had envisioned. Comparable trends were evident in similar institutions regarding buy-in
and resources offered through an industrial education. Moreover,
trade instruction, a core component of the industrial curriculum,
was often viewed as limited by students. In general, schools for
African Americans were not comparable to institutions of formal
education for whites.
A second consideration that influenced the momentum of
a formal education system for African American children was an
underestimation of the extent of racism and discrimination in the
South. The Mayesville Institute stated that pupils who remained
through the four-year course were prepared to enter the industrial field and experienced no difficulty in finding employment.
However, the social and political attitudes of society were not as
conducive to their progression as the institute had envisioned. As
the percentage of African American children attending schools
increased, opposition to the outcomes of schooling became a major focus.
If the “black child lost her hold on the imagination of many
in American society in the late nineteenth century, she remained
the focus of aspirations for African Americans,” as Mary Niall
Mitchell has observed. The saving grace would not come in the
form of correcting neglected inequalities or providing restitution
for the denial of human rights, but in progressing the cause of
social equality for all Americans. This is the ideal that an industrial education for blacks sought to realize and that the nation
challenged entering into the twentieth century. ◆
Originally from New Bern, North Carolina, Dorothy Hines Datiri
is a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University in the Education Policy Program. Her research interests include high school
dropouts, the political history of African American education, and
urban education. She thanks Dr. Michael Sedlak, Dr. Peter Youngs,
Duke University Libraries, and the History of Education Society for
their assistance with this article.
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