Street Manual Training School, Minter Alabama

Date added: December 30, 2023 Categories: Alabama School

Girls' Dormitory, north elevation, looking southeast (1999)

The Street Manual Training School was a part of a successful nationally-supported vocational training school for blacks in the early and mid-twentieth century. The school reflects the lasting impact that Booker T. Washington's program of industrial education developed at the Tuskegee Institute had on the education of black youth. This educational program was part of a larger philosophy toward how blacks could improve their social and economic position in the Jim Crow-era South. The residential and academic sections of the campus attest to the importance of personal as well as academic development in the plans of founder Emmanuel M. Brown.

Booker T. Washington's educational philosophy and the Tuskegee Institute served as models for the Street Manual Training School's emphasis on practical agricultural and vocational training. Washington's ideas also influenced Brown's efforts to help students develop personally by promoting the ideals of high moral character, cleanliness, obedience, and responsibility. Dr. W. W. Harper wrote in a letter of introduction for Emmanuel Brown in 1934:

"Dr. Brown is a product of the Booker T. Washington School and is a very remarkable man. Through his intelligent zeal and persistent determination he has developed in our county a wonderful school which is not only an educational center but a moral and spiritual one over a large area.... The graduates are not only good farmers and house-keepers but they are self-respecting and respected citizens."

Newspapers also sang the praises of Brown's school and his focus on bettering black students for jobs they were most likely to hold in the early twentieth century. In a c.1948 article, Brown said of the struggles of African Americans that "it is important during this time never to antagonize... Antagonizing does not help; you cannot push growth. It means a steady, loving, prayerful effort, never giving way to discouragement."

Industrial education had several proponents among those involved with the education of blacks in the late nineteenth century, the foreground to the founding of the Street Manual Training School. Horace Mann Bond noted that "J.L.M. Curry was a firm believer in the virtues of both industrial and manual training in the schools. His election to the position of Field Agent for the Peabody fund in 1881, in the same year that Washington came to Tuskegee, may have been responsible for the great vogue this theory of education immediately began to enjoy in schools for Negroes." William Hooper Councill of Huntsville State Colored Normal and Industrial School (now Alabama A&M) was another supporter involved in Alabama education.

Brown's enduring belief in the type of manual training Washington publicized at Tuskegee ran counter to other trends in black secondary schools in the twentieth century. Robert G. Sherer writes that "By 1901, Washington's national and philanthropic connections made him increasingly influential with many blacks. But even in 1916, the year after Washington died, most black secondary schools in Alabama still followed the lead of the AMA [American Missionary Association] in offering college preparatory or liberal arts education." Brown had attended Tuskegee and founded the Street Manual Training School during the period of Washington's greatest influence and remained true to the industrial school philosophy for as long as the school operated. Washington's description of Tuskegee as "a school built around a problem" would also apply to Brown's work on the primary and secondary level at Street Manual Training School. Horace Mann Bond elaborates: "The problem included three classes of people: the Negroes, whom [Washington] hoped to educate and to aid in achieving progress; the Northern white people, whom he depended upon to finance the school; and the Southern white people, whose support was essential, first, in order to permit such an institution as he envisioned to exist in the heart of the South, and, second, to make a success of the demonstration in better race relations which was his ultimate goal." Brown also followed Washington's efforts at Tuskegee by beginning with farm training in a rural setting and then instructing students in building trades as the school expanded, thereby providing educational opportunity while using a ready labor force.

During the late 1930s and 1940s, Street Manual Training School underwent a small building boom as old frame structures burned and were replaced with modern brick buildings. American history and the fortunes of Emmanuel Brown's school intersected in this period, when industrial education garnered national attention through the activities of the National Youth Administration. The NYA was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs aimed at helping young people find places in the workforce through job training programs and work-study arrangements for college tuition. According to NYA historian Richard Reiman, the agency was "designed in part to democratize the delivery of American education" through the inclusion of job training courses aimed at low-income youth in an educational system that had previously been heavily weighted towards the liberal arts. The agency also developed a reputation for its progressive social policies. As Reiman writes,

The NYA's brush with issues central to the nascent civil rights movement has fascinated historians.... In 1938 the agency . . convened the first federal conference on the plight of American blacks, a conference on the needs of black youth. The unofficial head of Roosevelt's black cabinet of advisers was Mary McLeod Bethune, director of the NYA's Division of Negro Affairs (the first intra agency bureaucracy within the federal government devoted to black problems). Within the New Deal, no one urged FDR to battle the poll tax or topple the pillars of southern economic feudalism and poverty as much as the NYA's Alabama-born executive director, Aubrey Willis Williams."

It is likely that Brown's work at the Street Manual Training School was of particular interest to the NYA because of his reputation for promoting job training and his desire to afford educational opportunities to rural black youth.

The differing philosophies of industrial education versus a college curriculum revealed a split in how members of the black academic community approached the idea of attaining social equality. This contrast is most pronounced in the personalities and theories of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois on the national scale, but Alabama experienced similar dissension in the variety of black educational institutions established here, including Tuskegee, in the late nineteenth century. It is not merely a coincidence that Washington's years of greatest influence roughly coincide with the worst years of white suppression of blacks under Jim Crow. Emmanuel Brown opted for the philosophy that he thought would bring the greatest success for the rural youth of a Black Belt county like Dallas.

Although the earliest building dates to 1906-1908, the Street Manual Training School was founded in 1904, the year that Emmanuel Brown graduated from Harvard University. The establishment of the school began the realization of a lifelong dream for its founder, who believed that education would improve the quality of life in his rural community. Brown was born in 1883 in Richmond, Dallas County, Alabama, on the plantation where his parents had been slaves. Dr. William Wade Harper, a Selma physician and owner of the land where Brown was born, encouraged the young student to pursue his education at Snow Hill Institute in Wilcox County, a school founded in 1893 by Tuskegee graduate William J. Edwards that may have influenced Brown's choice of curriculum for Street Manual. Snow Hill instructed students from the region and other states in the liberal arts and vocational and industrial training.'? Brown continued his studies and his exposure to industrial education and manual training at Tuskegee Institute in Macon County. Later he graduated from Harvard. Dr. Harper continued to aid Brown in his efforts to establish a school after graduation, introducing him to potential donors and supporters around the country. Brown first contacted Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead of Brookline, Massachusetts, a philanthropist and the person "having the most distant address that he could find." She thus began a lifelong friendship with the ten-year-old Brown and later helped purchase twenty-five acres of land and the first cow for the new school.

Brown and his school benefited from the encouragement and financial support of a large number of philanthropically-minded people in the local area and in the Northeast. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Street of Cambridge, Massachusetts, were especially supportive, and Brown honored them by naming the young school after them. Dr. Harper and his son, Dr. William F. Harper, continued to bolster Brown's efforts. Dr. E. W. Gamble, an Episcopal clergyman from Selma and a friend of the Harpers, helped Brown start his school and continued to assist him throughout its operation. Other supporters from Selma included Dr. J. A. Lee, Judge G. C. Blanton, Judge William R. Rountree, Jr., Dr. S. B. Allison, W. H. Plant, M. L. Calhoun, Mrs. B. R. Allison, Sam Barton, Prof. J. L. Moulder, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Lide, S. J. Curry, Mr. and Mrs. B. L. Youngblood, S. Eagle and Sons, and Tepper Brothers. Other Alabamians provided assistance, including Dr. M. Y. Dabney, McClellan Van der Veer, Erskine Ramsey, J. W. Porter, H. A. Berg, E. D. LeMay, Hugh Morrow, Douglas Arant, Donald Conner, James E. Chappell, Hugh Stockham, and Robert I. Ingalls Sr. Columnist John Temple Graves publicized Brown's fundraising efforts in editorials in the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Age-Herald, particularly after Brown was offered a $25,000 matching grant by the Waterman Steamship Company of Mobile in 1945. The Street Manual Training School was also publicized in the Selma Times-Journal, the Birmingham News, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Boston Transcript. Newspaper articles, as well as meetings among supporters in the Boston area and letters written by supporters, helped develop a wide group of interested people who assisted Brown with his efforts to expand the school and its educational offerings. The board of trustees was composed of both black and white members.

The school always operated on a tight budget, frequently falling short of the cost of operation. A 1950 Birmingham News editorial relates that "most of the operating expenses for the school must come from donations, as few of the students are able to pay even the small $1.25 monthly tuition." However, students were not turned away for their inability to pay. Rather, "friends of the school from the North" donated funds to make up for tuition monies. Northern philanthropists' involvement in the school is a testament to Brown's skill as a fundraiser and spokesman for his project. He successfully created broad support for his vocational training program among both Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites. Local supporters, led by Dr. W. F. Harper, rallied to his cause in 1950 to fund the completion of the Vocational Building restoration. An estimated $33,000 to $38,000 was needed to complete the reconstruction of the large E-shaped structure, which housed departments training students in auto mechanics, carpentry, and home economics. This building was also built by students under the supervision of their instructors.

By mid-century, the school had as many as 350 students between the ages of six and eighteen and a teaching staff of fifteen. The State Board of Education financed salaries for six teachers, while the school paid for the remaining nine. A 1950 report prepared by the Dallas County Superintendent's office notes that six elementary-level teachers were employed at Street Manual. The facilities at the school were evaluated that year for a report by the State Board of Education. Of seventy-three schools for black children, sixty-five were recommended to be abandoned. The report advised that four more be used temporarily, and four be retained for permanent use. This last group included Street Manual Training School as well as the Dallas County Training School at Beloit. Furthermore, the Street Manual campus was recommended as a consolidated elementary and junior/senior high school along with five others. The report attests to the quality of the buildings at the Street Manual Training School versus those at other schools for black children in Dallas County. Philanthropic support allowed Emmanuel Brown to build a school with modern buildings superior to the schools that sufficed for most black students. A 1953 report notes, "More than 1200 of about 2200 Negro county schools [in Alabama] meet in churches or other non-publicly owned building, while the whites have only about 90 non-publicly owned schools and 2400 regular county public school buildings. Most black schools were not as substantial as Street Manual. The report continues, stating that the 1930 average valuation of white Dallas County schools was about $22,000 versus $1,100 for black schools. Inequality of school buildings echoed per pupil expenditures: expenditures for black students amounted to 13 percent of that for whites in 1930 and approximately 56 percent in 1950-51. The Street Manual campus provided a learning environment markedly different from other black schools in Dallas County, thanks to the efforts of Emmanuel Brown and private donations.

The campus grew from the single building in which Brown began his school in 1906. Large frame academic and industrial buildings were constructed between 1907 and 1926. As the school continued to grow during the Depression, Brown contacted the National Youth Administration and obtained funding for student work programs at the school. Students learned building trades while working on dormitories and a domestic science building, now known as the dining room. The 1939 annual report of the NYA in Alabama featured five photographs of ongoing construction at the Street Manual Training School. Dormitories had recently been destroyed by fire, and the photographs show the Boys' Dormitory, Girls' Dormitory, and Dining Room under construction. In one photograph the slightly pointed brick arch on the facade of the Boys' Dormitory entry porch appears ready for a roof. The report stated that NYA youth at the school were trained in brick-masonry, carpentry, and other skills while also attending classes." Edward and Timothy Lewis, local builders trained at Tuskegee Institute, were hired to draw plans and supervise the construction projects and student workers. The NYA also assisted with a new classroom and administration building when a fire in the early 1940s destroyed the old frame Academic Building. The new academic building was two-thirds complete when a second fire destroyed the c.1940 Industrial Building on January 31, 1943. This second fire also prompted the erection of a new water tower on the campus. Construction on the academic building had stopped in 1942 after $28,000,000 was cut from NYA funding. Supporters rallied to the school's aid with $5,000 to complete construction of the new building, and Brown began raising money for replacement structures.

Buildings were only part of Street Manual Training School's campus, however. The school eventually comprised 200 acres which were divided among a 10-acre campus, 75 acres of land in cultivation, 25 acres of pasture, and 90 acres of woodland. The land was a living laboratory for the vocational agriculture students that farmed it. Today the Street Manual Training School includes 18.36 acres owned by Brown School, Incorporated, and an additional 3.5 acres including the Girls' Dormitory that is owned by W. R. Moultrie, former school administrator and board member.

The Street Manual Training School was unique in its rural Dallas County context, but its educational programs as well as its founder were part of a larger debate about the best way to educate African American students in the era of Jim Crow. It is similar to other schools for black youth in Alabama, such as Snow Hill Institute in Wilcox County, that combined manual training with traditional primary and secondary subjects. The school also bears the imprint of the influence of the federal government through New Deal programs like the NYA. Job training made construction projects at the school possible and perpetuated the system of industrial education that had trained builders Edward and Timothy Lewis at Tuskegee. The campus is a remarkably intact artifact of the era of manual training and an illustration of the educational philosophy of its founder, Emmanuel M. Brown.

Site Description

The Street Manual Training School is located in southeastern Dallas County, approximately 26 miles south of Selma. The 23.12 acre core of the campus faces north along County Road 38, just west of the Richmond community. The complex includes seven buildings constructed between 1906 and 1964 as well as a c.1943 water tower. The majority of the buildings are red brick structures built between c.1940 and 1950 to house students, workshops, and classrooms. Another brick building, a shower facility, was built in 1964. Founder Emmanuel M. Brown's 1906-1908 hipped-roof cottage is located at the center of the campus. The campus once included 200 acres, but this land was sold after the school closed in 1971. One building, the Women Teachers' and Girls' Dormitory, now lies on land belonging to W.F. Moultrie, a former administrator and board member of the Street Manual Training School. Moultrie also owns another 78.7 acres of land that once belonged to the school. Currently the campus is vacant except for the Dining Room building, which is used as a senior citizen's center by Brown School, Inc. This organization is dedicated to restoring the facilities for use as a school once again.

A driveway at the midpoint of the property provides access to the campus. This drive approaches the Brown house, which faces County Road 38 to the north. East of the Brown house lies the residential quadrangle area composed of three one-story brick buildings. The Women Teachers' and Girls' Dormitory lies to the southeast, the Dining Room is directly east, and the Boys' Dormitory lies to the northeast. Concrete walkways join both dorm buildings and the Dining Room. The water tower is sited behind the Boys' Dormitory in the northeast corner of the campus. The academic buildings are located west of the Brown house. A small shower building is located near the road next to a paved area that is now deteriorating. Farther west, the east-facing Industrial Building forms the western boundary of the campus core. The land slopes gently downward behind it. The Harper Building, a classroom and administration facility, occupies the southwest quarter of the campus. These two buildings are deteriorating, and overgrowth makes access to them difficult. A driveway leading past the Industrial Building to the Harper Building is now partially obscured with brush and seedling pine.

Several of the buildings were built by Edward and Timothy Lewis, who were trained in design and construction at Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama. The Lewises employed students at the Street Manual Training School on their building projects in the same manner that they were taught by work experience at Tuskegee. This method of experiential learning also made the school eligible for funding from the National Youth Administration, which supported similar projects around the country during 1935 to 1943.

Emmanuel M. Brown House (1906-1908) faces north. This one-story frame-hipped-roof cottage rests on brick piers. It is sheathed in weatherboard and has a scalloped tin roof and four small brick chimneys. The facade is composed of three bays. A gable-front porch supported by slender wood posts shelters the two easternmost bays. A six-over-six double-hung sash window is found in the west bay of the facade, while a two-over-two window is found in the east bay. A two-light transom is located over the door, which has three horizontal panels. The east elevation contains two, two-over-two windows. The rear or south elevation includes a recessed porch sheltering the rear door in the central bay. Two slender wood posts supported the porch, although one has been knocked down. A two-over-two window is found on the west side, and the east side contains a small bathroom that enclosed part of the porch area when it was added. A west-facing door leads into this room from the rear porch. The small room has a two-over-two horizontal pane window on this elevation. Finally, the west elevation contains two, two-over-two windows and one, six-over-six window.

The house is a central hall plan with four principal 10' by 14' rooms. Wide board floors are found in the central hallway. A tassel screen divides the hallway between the front pair of rooms and the rear of the house. The walls in the central passage are covered in vertical wainscoting with sheetrock above. The northeast room has 4" board floors with a decorative floor cloth. This room has plain wainscoting, wide molding, and a sheetrock ceiling. Two-over-two windows are located on both the north and east walls. There was formerly a stove on the south wall of the room. The room across the hall on the northwest corner of the house has a wide board floor with horizontal bead board in the wainscoting. Six-over-six windows are found on both the north and west walls of this room. A simple mantel, on the south wall, has been fitted for a stove. Behind or directly south of this room is a bedroom with vertical bead board in the wainscoting and a simple mantel. This room has plaster walls and ceilings and one, two-over-two window on the west wall. Across the hall, in the southeast portion of the house, is a bedroom with horizontal flushboard walls and a flushboard ceiling. This room also has a decorative floor cloth that simulates the look of linoleum. One two-over-two window is found on the east wall, and a small closet is located on the south wall. Access to the kitchen, on the southwest corner of the house, is through the rear door. The kitchen has two, two-over-two windows, on the south and west walls. The bathroom on the southeast corner is only accessible from the rear porch door.

Women Teachers' and Girls' Dormitory (c.1940) faces west. This one-story brick veneer building has a full basement accessed from the rear or east side. It rests on a continuous concrete-faced brick foundation with small iron ventilators. The five-bay facade is on the gable end of the long rectangular building with a central passage. A three-bay gabled porch with end-returns shelters the entrance, which is a pair of fifteen-pane doors surmounted by a six-light transom. Two windows are located under the porch roof, and two are found in the outer bays of the facade. Brick posts support the porch roof, which covers a wooden floor. There is another entrance on the north elevation, which is a five-paneled door covered with a one-bay gabled entry porch with end-returns. This small porch is supported by a brick arch and piers and has a concrete floor. Windows throughout the building are six-over-six double-hung sash. Six brick chimneys pierce the roof, which is covered with asphalt shingles. This building was built by Timothy and Edward Lewis with the assistance of Street students and partial funding by the National Youth Administration.

Dining Room (c.1940) faces west. This one-story side-gable brick veneer building has a continuous concrete-faced brick foundation with small iron ventilators. Entrances are through two symmetrically placed gabled concrete porches supported by round arches resting on brick piers. There are end returns and two pairs of six-over-six windows on the gable ends. There is a small rear bathroom addition on the east elevation. This was added at the same time that the building was plumbed, probably in the late 1960s. This building is now used as a senior citizens' center by Brown School, Inc. Doors throughout the building are five-panel. The central chimney was removed c.1995 when the building was reroofed with asphalt shingles. The Dining Room building was also built by Timothy and Edward Lewis with the assistance of Street students and partial funding from the National Youth Administration.

Boys' Dormitory (c.1940) faces west. This one-story gable-end brick veneer building has a continuous concrete-faced brick foundation with small iron ventilators. Windows throughout the building are six-over-six double-hung sash. The five-bay facade is on the gable end of the long rectangular building with a central passage. A three-bay gabled porch with end returns shelters a concrete porch floor. Brick porch posts support a slightly pointed brick arch, which is beginning to crack. The entrance is through a pair of doors with six panes in the top portion and three horizontal panels below. The doors are surmounted by a transom of three sections, each containing two horizontal panes. Two windows flank the entrance under the porch, while two more are found in the outer bays of the facade. There is a rear entrance to the building on the east elevation. This five-panel door is sheltered by a door hood with exposed rafters and brackets. Three concrete steps lead up to the door. The rear of the building also has end returns in the gable and windows on either side of the central door. This building also has a side entrance giving onto the residential quadrangle area. The five-panel door is located in the center of the south elevation. It is sheltered by a gabled concrete porch supported by round arches resting on brick piers that is identical to the entrances on the Dining Room building. Two windows are located on either side of the south door. The interior has 4" wood floors, plaster walls, and a sheetrock ceiling. Interior doors are topped with two-light transoms. The central passage has a molded cornice and baseboard. The southern side of the interior includes two small bedrooms, a side hallway to the exterior door, and a kitchen and utility room at the rear of the building. The northern side features a large bedroom, a bathroom with a four-pane window, small bedroom, and a sitting room. Chimneys were removed c.1995 when the building was reroofed with asphalt shingles.

This building was also constructed by Edward and Timothy Lewis with the assistance of Street students and partial funding from the National Youth Administration.

Water Tower (c.1943). Conical roofed steel water tank supported by steel supports reinforced with latticework.

Shower (c.1964) faces west. This is a small one-story brick veneer building with a flat roof.

Industrial Building (c.1940, c.1943-51) faces east. This 10,000 square-foot E-shaped building has its facade on the long side of the E. The one-story building originally had a hipped roof with a central projecting gable. It now has a c.1950 flat roof with a three-step parapet on the facade with a decorative brick cornice. The 25-bay facade is composed of twenty-light windows with concrete sills and brick lintels. The entrance, centered on the east facade, is through metal double doors with a five-light transom. The rear or west elevation of the building at one time had a one-story porch with round brick arches resting on brick piers on the inside of the E between the projecting wings. The rear currently has a deteriorated shed-roof porch resting on wood posts. The north side of the building contains a large bay opening for the automotive shop. Steel trusses support the wood roof, which is heavily deteriorated. This building was designed by Timothy and Edward Lewis and constructed with the assistance of Street students. This long brick building appears newly built in historic photographs of the campus when the frame academic building was still standing, dating it to the early 1940s. However, newspaper accounts note that the "$50,000 Trades building and all its equipment were destroyed in the fire of January 31, 1943." The reconstruction of the building after the fire seems to have followed its original plan except for the change from a hipped roof to a flat roof.

William W. Harper Memorial Building (Academic and Administrative Building) (c.1942-49) faces north. This two-story brick veneer building has a continuous concrete-faced brick foundation and full basement. The hipped roof structure has a 13-bay facade with a recessed arch entrance. Six-over-six windows are arranged symmetrically on either side of the entrance. Windows are paired except in the bays immediately next to the entrance and in the outermost bays. There is also a pair of six-over-six windows above the entrance. There is an entrance on one end of the building, the west elevation. Paired windows, flanked by single windows, are found above the end door, which is also flanked by single windows. The side entrance leads into a double stair hall at the end of the main corridor that provides access to the auditorium above. Eight classrooms, four per side of the building, line the north and south walls of the first-floor interior. Two-light transoms surmount classroom doors which have six panes in the top portion with three horizontal panels below. A central stair on the south side of the first-floor main corridor provides access to the second floor. The second floor contained the auditorium, offices, and other classrooms. This building also contained a library and two bathrooms. The Harper Building, named in honor of Emmanuel Brown's lifelong benefactor, was designed by Timothy and Edward Lewis from Brown's requests. It was dedicated in November 1949 after the curtailment of NYA funding periodically halted its construction in 1942. This building is heavily deteriorated but retains its original plan and some materials.

Concrete Walkways (c.1940-1949). The system of walkways linking the dormitories and dining room, forming a small quadrangle area around a cedar tree, was probably constructed during the same period as the majority of the buildings.

Concrete walks were common landscape elements in this period, and they contribute to the creation of the residential area as a pleasing and distinct component of the campus.