Voorhees: Elizabeth Evelyn Wright’s “Small Tuskegee” and Black Education in the Post-Reconstruction South

Voorhees: Elizabeth Evelyn Wright's "Small Tuskegee" and Black Education in the Post-Reconstruction South Angel David Nieves "She toiled through countless ills and troubles until the fields were secured, the buildings erected, and the children gathered. She made the vision true."r 0 nJune r3, r894, Elizabeth Evelyn Wright was awakened at 2 a.m. by the cries of Miss Jones, a fellow teacher at the former Steele School. Two loads oflumber, delivered earlier in the day for the erection of a new school building, were suspiciously ablaze. Little could be done to save the costly building materials set aside for work the next morning. The women, along with some of the nearby townspeople, stood in horror and disbelief as their dream of an independent and autonomous school for AfricanAmericans was once again shattered. This act of arson-the second actually-believed to be the work of the local Klu Klux Klan (KKK), would not deter Elizabeth Evelyn Wright from a lifelong mission to provide educational opportunities for rural African-Americans in the state of South Carolina (jig. I).2 Women like Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, founder of what would become the Voorhees Industrial School, not only promoted a program of 'race-uplift' through industrial education, but also engaged with many of the pioneering African-American architects and designers of the period to design model schools and communities for the race as a form of nation-building. 'Raceuplift ' became the platform for building a civic culture that emphasized black national pride and respectability.3 The creation of these 'race-based' educational institutions was an effort to remedy not only the effects of enslavement, but to also establish the mechanisms necessary for the ereFig . I Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, Voorhees Founder, c. I9oo. (From Dr. JFB. Coleman, Tuskegee to Voorhees: The Booker T. Washington Idea Projected by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright Columbia: The R.L. Bryan Company, I922) ation of a black nation throughout the difficult transition from emancipation to political selfdetermination . Wright devoted her life to activism, fostered in large part by her early educational experiences at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Educated at Tuskegee, and a student of Washington's educational philosophy of manual training, Wright understood the need for an educational facility equipped to train her people for employment in the trades and agriculture . Wright's lifelong work to establish the industrial school is significant because it presents a way ofunderstanding how 'race women' actively ARRIS ANGEL DAVID NIEVES Fig. 2. Drawing Class at Tuskegee, I90I-02. (Frances Benjamin johnston Collection, Library ofCongress) engaged their ideological notions of 'race-uplift' with the built environment throughout the 189os (jig. 2). It seems clear that Wright's work at Voorhees was, to some degree, a response to the enslavement and trauma inflicted upon her race. Might it furthermore be true that her effort to build the school, with the help of white financiers, was a way of wresting authority and power over the story of enslavement and oppression? Are its buildings a form of testimony to the ravages endured by African-Americans under chattel slavery? Are they mere monuments, or are they a kind of slave narrative? I maintain that the buildings narrate the traumatic experiences of former slaves and raise important questions about the ways in which enslavement would be remembered and commemorated.4 For black reformers and intellectuals, those born after or at the end of slavery, concerns over "race history" became critical , particularly in education, the arts, literature, and the built environment. Women like Wright understood that the memory of slavery served as a potential catalyst for social betterment as emancipated blacks formed nationalist self-help organizations and institutions. At the close of the Civil War AfricanAmerican women not only faced the challenges of emancipation, but also the ominous tasks of rebuilding both their own lives, and those of the larger community, as newly freed Mrican people. Women like Wright insisted on helping to rebuild their race through higher education. Wright felt that industrial education was the very best pathway for African-Americans, who were still suffering from the ravages of decades of enforced slavery and the many newly legislated Jim Crow laws. Black Victorians, like Wright, were...