Janie Porter Barrett

Janie Porter Barrett ( Porter; August 9, 1865 – August 27, 1948) was an American social reformer, educator and welfare worker. She established the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, a pioneering rehabilitation center for African-American female "delinquents". She was also the founder of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.

Early life Barrett was born in Athens, Georgia, on August 9, 1865. Barrett's father's name is unknown; however, he is thought to have been Caucasian because of Barrett's fair skin.

The Skinners, a Caucasian family, hired Barrett's mother as a live-in housekeeper and seamstress. The Skinners pampered Barrett and educated her along with their own children.

Barrett's mother married a railway worker and lived with him while still working for the Skinners, but Barrett continued to live with the Skinners. Mrs. Skinner wanted to become her legal guardian so that she could send Barrett to a school in the northern U.S.A., where Barrett could live as a white person. Julia vetoed this plan and sent Barrett to the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, where she would live as a black person in a black environment.

Barrett was deeply involved in every aspect of the Industrial School's program. She personally managed the parole system, by which girls who demonstrated sufficient responsibility were placed in carefully selected foster homes. These girls also were given jobs and were supported by follow-up services such as ministerial guidance, a newsletter called The Booster and personal letters.

Barrett excelled in her role at the school. Her childhood had equipped her to deal with the socially important white women who controlled the trustee board and who were able to influence state legislators to appropriate funds for the school. She said: "You know we cannot do the best social welfare work unless, as in this school, the two races undertake it together." She was held in such a high regard that she could demand that the future Caucasian employers of her students treated them humanely.