Black History Month
Today marks the first day of Black History Month, an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans while simultaneously recognizing their profound role in United States history. Although United States presidents began appointing February as Black History Month in 1976, the celebration formally began in 1915 after half a century passed following the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery. During the 1960s, in response to the civil rights movement, “Negro History Week” progressed into Black History Month on a majority of college campuses. President Gerald Ford officially appointed February as Black History Month in 1976 and told the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor through our history.”
Within the social work and mental health community, Janie Porter Barrett remains a name that is too often forgotten with her achievements being discredited. Mrs. Barrett was a Black female social worker who founded homes for incarcerated girls because during the 1800s and 1900s there was no separation from adults and children. After graduating college, Mrs. Barrett founded the Locust Street Social Settlement in 1890 which was the first settlement house for Black people in the United States. By 1902, a separate clubhouse facility was built that included opportunities for girls and boys to partake in athletic games in addition to “having more attractive homes, cleaner sidewalks, learning how to raise poultry successfully, learning to care and feed infants and small children and through the efforts of the house much has been done to improve the social life of the community.”
By 1914, Mrs. Barrett and Mary-Cooke Branch Munford helped aid the purchase of a farm in Virginia that was used as a rehabilitation center for Black girls in trouble with the law. Prior to this rehabilitation center opening, Mrs. Barrett created a standard of care for dependent Black children who had been mistreated and abused. The program she established became a model for treatment services that social workers used to provide safe housing, medical care, and job training for unmarried young Black women and their children. Between the years of 1915 to her retirement in 1940, Mrs. Barrett successfully ran the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls which was viewed as a home rather than a prison. Activities within this school helped to build agricultural skills, household skills, and cleanliness. Those living at this school were sentenced to prison by local judges and because there were no foster homes for women of color, prison was the only alternative. Following Mrs. Barrnett’s death in 1948, the school was renamed the Janie Porter Barrett School for Girls to honor her legacy of care and support for the African American community.
Source: History.com, VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project