She was born a slave in northern Virginia’s Prince William County, but by the late 1880’s she finagled enough money from people like tycoon Andrew Carnegie to build an entire educational campus: classrooms, dormitories, dining halls, libraries and shops to teach both academic classes and trades like carpentry, animal husbandry, cooking and sewing to male and female black students from across the region, who had few other options for continuing their education.
Opened in 1894 with a small group of students and lasting in various forms until the original buildings were torn down in the 1960’s, Jennie Dean’s “Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth” is testament to one woman’s determination and leadership. Her legacy lives on through the hundreds of students she touched, and their families.
What vision she had.
What persistence in the face of extraordinary odds, from “ordinary” obstacles such as lack of money to the everyday insults of segregation and discrimination. What a gift she gave to so many generations of classes.
Frederick Douglass himself delivered the school’s dedication ceremony address in September, 1894. Here’s what he said, noting the location near major Civil War battles fought over whether people in certain states had the right to own slaves:
“No spot on the soil of Virginia could be more fitly chosen for planting this school….it is a place where the children of a once enslaved people may realize the blessings of liberty and education.”
Before they were torn down,the Manassas Industrial School buildings housed segregated classes during decades of Jim Crow.
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