Slater Fund

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The John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen was a

African Americans in the Southern United States. It ceased independent operation in 1937, by which time it had disbursed about $4,000,000.[1]

Establishment

John Fox Slater, founder of the fund

In May 1882 Slater transferred $1,000,000 to a board of trustees incorporated by the State of New York. The fund's stated purpose was "uplifting the

freedmen existed before the Civil War and public schools were limited after Reconstruction.) Instead, the Slater Fund contributed to schools which provided the education of colored students. The majority of blacks still lived in rural areas and had to attend segregated public schools, which were typically underfunded by the white Democrat-dominated state legislatures. With an economy chiefly based on agriculture, the South was struggling to recover from losses during the American Civil War, and funds for public services were limited.[4]

Personnel

Among the original trustees were

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, Wallace Buttrick, and James H. Dillard
were general agents of the fund.

Work

The fund was of great value in aiding vocational schools in the South, its largest beneficiaries being the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Hampton, Virginia, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Alabama, Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee. At Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is the Slater State Normal and Industrial School, founded in 1892 and named after the founder of the fund; it is now part of Winston-Salem State University. Other state normal schools for African Americans received assistance from the fund, as did some Southern urban school boards. The fund was opposed to liberal education for blacks, believing it would foster discontent.[1]

Through its funding of the Hampton Institute the fund also provided for the annual Hampton Negro Conference held there.[5]

About 1915, the Peabody Education Fund was dissolved, with some of its assets transferred to the Slater Fund.In 1937, the

Virginia Randolph Fund
.

See also

  • Rosenwald Fund (1917–48) built many rural schools for African-American children

References

Sources

  • Ayres, Leonard Porter (1911). "The John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen". Seven Great Foundations. New York. pp. 23–27.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Caldwell, B. C. (September 1913). "The Work of the Jeanes and Slater Funds". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 49: The Negro's Progress in Fifty Years: 173–176.
    S2CID 144545089
    .
  • Fisher, John E. (1986). The John F. Slater Fund: A Nineteenth Century Affirmative Action for Negro Education. University Press of America.
  • Memorial of John F. Slater, of Norwich, Connecticut, 1815–1884. Norwich, Connecticut: John Wilson and Son, University Press, Cambridge. 1885.

Citations

  1. ^
    S2CID 146685122
    .
  2. ^ Memorial 1885, p.29
  3. ^ Work, Monroe N., ed. (1913). "Educational Funds: The John F. Slater Fund". Negro Year Book: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro. Tuskegee Institute. p. 181.
  4. ^ Brown, Titus (2002). Faithful, firm, and true: African American education in the South. Macon, Georgia: Mercer Univ. Press.[page needed]
  5. hdl:2027/coo.31924093254153
    .

Further reading

  • Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, published annually (Washington, D. C.)
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