An Architecture of Education by Angel David Nieves, an Associate Professor of History and Digital Humanities at San Diego State University, provides an excellent volume on intersectional feminism, agency, education, space, memory, self-help, and uplift. The book draws on the life experiences of Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, the founder of the illustrious Voorhees College in 1897 in South Carolina, and Jennie Dean, founder of the defunct Manassas Industrial School in 1893 in Virginia. Through six chapters, Nieves argues how “the intellectual project of race uplift as a social movement included the built environment as a primary vehicle for race-based advancement” (p. 1). Using the term built environment as a guide for further analysis, Nieves posits that ideas of self-help, uplift, and memory were just as important to black women as they were to black men, and that the nascent institutions of education were at the center of this progress.
Wright and Dean both saw industrial training as the best path for the people they served. Just like William Jasper Hale of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College, Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, Samuel Chapman Armstrong of the Hampton Institute, and Hiram Revels of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, Wright and Dean both networked with local whites for funding and land to create a space for training men and women in normal and industrial education as well as for an active role in their community.
Seeking to fill a critical gap in the literature on African American education, Nieves explains that the contribution of black women has gone unexplored and underwritten. Indeed, Nieves is correct, as past studies have informed us of the contribution of black men and white philanthropists. Further studies focused on the contribution of historically black colleges and universities to the African American community and the leadership style of their presidents, particularly at a time when most of the black colleges were celebrating fifty- to a hundred-year anniversaries. These include Rayford Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867-1967 (1969); Leedell W. Neyland and John W. Riley, The History of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (1963); Frederick A. McGinnis, A History and an Interpretation of Wilberforce University (1941); and Willard Range, The Rise and Progress of Negro Colleges in Georgia, 1865-1949 (1951).
Although the study of these institutions is valuable to our understanding of African American education, they provided limited attention to black women's contribution, except through the perspective of students. However, recent studies have given attention to women's influence, including in the arena of campus protest movements and breaking barriers in the academy: Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (2012); Sarah Caroline Thuesen, Greater Than Equal (2013); Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954 (2007); and Kabria Baumgartner, “Love and Justice: African American Women, Education, and Protest in Antebellum New England” (2019). But even with these critical studies, more work needs to be done on black women educators and how ideas of uplift and black social progress were connected to their freedom and intellectual, physical, economic, and social development.
In his book, Nieves takes the reader through several unique topics of interest. In chapter 1, “Contested Monument-Making and the Crisis of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920,” Nieves explores how blacks maintained their space in the South among white nationalist tensions and assault on black schools and churches. Memory was essential to white nationalistic attitudes toward African Americans, hence the importance of symbolic memorials of the lost cause not only as a rallying cry for white supremacy but as a way of intimidating African Americans. Nieves's use of memory as a point of analysis to understand the necessity of the built environment for African Americans is a crucial starting point for his broader narrative.
Chapter 2, “The Impact of Chicago's ‘White City’ on African American Placemaking,” examines the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. During a day dedicated to “Colored Americans,” black educators and students took advantage of the allocated time to display work and achievement by various black institutions. Although some resented having a separate day for African Americans—most notably Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who lamented the exposition for marginalizing the black community and distributing racist imagery—Frederick Douglass saw it as an opportunity to not only show the progress of African Americans but to call out the racism and violence that had proliferated throughout the country against black people. Nieves explains that the exposition further galvanized black intellectuals and reformers to push for programs that project positive images and cultivate the accomplishments of African Americans. Primarily, the exposition influenced people like Wells-Barnett, Dean, and W.E. B. Du Bois to create spaces for protest, education, and black nationalism.
Chapter 3, “Tuskegee Utopianism: Where American Campus Planning Meets Black Nationalism,” explores the growth and architecture of black campuses. Nieves uses the Tuskegee Institute as an example to explain how ideas of black nationalism, uplift, and self-help were in full practice at the Tuskegee Institute when Washington had students design and build spaces for their education. Using student labor to create these spaces for themselves was not only a method to instill self-worth, but, on a broader scale, showed that African Americans were self-reliant.
Chapter 4, “The ‘Race Women’ Establishment: Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, Jennie Dean, and Their All-Black Schools” and chapter 5, “Manassas and Voorhees: Models of Race Uplift,” explore the lives and work of Wright and Dean in creating their institutions. Seeking to create a space for industrial training in the shadows of the Jim Crow South, both women not only dedicated their time to raising funds and procuring land and resources for their institutions but saw their institutions as a safe space for the intellectual and practical development of their people. In the last chapter, “Historically Black Colleges and Universities: In Service to the Race,” Nieves examines black campuses broadly as monuments to the struggles of African Americans since slavery. The Voorhees campus, the former Manassas Industrial School, and numerous other black institutions are structural time capsules whose architecture and landscape provide a window into the trauma and progress of the African American community.
Overall, Nieves's monograph provides a unique perspective of how we should approach our research on black educational institutions. Architecture is rarely used as a point of analysis; however, Nieves provides a new methodological approach to how we explore and write about these monuments. Furthermore, Nieves's focus on Wright and Dean offers a new layer to the contribution of women in education and further gives homage to their work in an era of unchecked white supremacy. With that said, I recommend this book to anyone researching black women and educational institutions.
