By the Community, For the Community

PAST & PRESENT THE GENESIS OF GIVING BLACK

BY THE COMMUNITY, FOR THE COMMUNITY

Decimated during the war, the Hampton Roads Black population exploded as thousands flocked to the area in search of loved ones, relief and opportunity. Existing channels of relief were overwhelmed and often denied to Black citizens who continued to look toward their churches, organizations, and each other for relief. Black giving continued through benevolent societies and mutual aid groups.

Two Black settlements quickly formed in Hampton Roads, one near Fort Monroe and the other in York County, as Blacks sought assistance and social services. Both settlements attracted formerly enslaved and freed Blacks from the countryside. Hampton Roads, specifically Fort Monroe, represented a beacon of hope and freedom for enslaved Blacks during the war. The fort’s commander, General Benjamin Butler, declared that slaves who reached Fort Monroe were “contraband” and free inside the fort. As word spread, thousands of free and newly freed Blacks flocked to Hampton Roads seeking shelter, food, relief and assistance in finding loved ones. In 1863, Black philanthropist and educator Mary Peake reportedly gave the first southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation under the Emancipation Oak Tree on present day Hampton University’s campus. In the Yorktown settlement, over 12,000 Blacks lived in a twenty-block area that included a church, schools, and a cemetery.20

Black women of Hampton Roads played significant leadership roles in early Black giving. Portsmouth native Ida Barbour, an early Ida Barbour. childhood advocate and Black Source: The New Journal philanthropist, established the and Guide first day care in Virginia. Barbour earned a teaching degree in Philadelphia, then returned to her hometown in 1898 to work as a teacher in the school she attended as a child. After a neighbor died, Ida and her elderly mother cared for her neighbor’s orphaned children and then began caring for the children of working-class Black mothers. Barbour’s sewing circle, “The Needle Guild of America,” raised funds to support her by holding bazaars and selling “dinners, furniture (and) jewelry.” Barbour “never said no to a child” and augmented her childcare work with her modest teaching salary. Through her vision and leadership, Barbour and other Black women established the Miller Day

MARY KELSEY PEAKE

Mary Kelsey Peake attended schools in Philadelphia, but returned to Norfolk to create a secret school in the First Baptist Church. She also founded the Daughters of Zion, a benevolent group that aimed to assist the vulnerable. After marriage and a move to Hampton, Peake established a second secret school where Blacks were taught how to read. After the Civil War, she was hired by the American Missionary Association as one of the first teachers in Hampton. Peake was not paid for her effort, believing her “compensation was in doing good deeds.”21

Source: Hampton University Archives

Nursery and Home in 1911. Today, Barbour’s organization survives as the nonprofit Ida Barbour Early Learning Center, whose mission is to support low-income families and prepare them for the global society.22

In 1867 two formerly enslaved women, Annetta M. Lane of Norfolk and Harriet R. Taylor of Hampton, founded the Southern chapter of the United Order of Tents. “The Tents” referred to the Underground Railroad practice of providing tents to those escaping slavery, and the Order of the Tents is one of the oldest Christian fraternal organizations of Black women. The Tents focused on helping newly freed Black women through mutual aid, building wealth, and ensuring economic security for the Black community. In the 1890s, Jamie Porter Barrett formed the Locust Street Social Settlement in 1890 and went on to found the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. These organizations established a precedent for future organizations to focus on wealth building strategies for their members.23

Hampton Institute Source: Everett Collection

LEGACY OF SISTERHOOD: ORDER OF THE TENTS

Original Headquarters of the Order of the Tents Source: Rose, 2000

Early Black giving in Hampton Roads is personified in the Order of the Tents (“The Tents”), one of the oldest Black female Christian organizations. The Tents’ founders were the early Black philanthropists Annetta Lane and Harriet Taylor, formerly enslaved women who served as Underground Railroad conductors. Lane secretly taught herself how to read and write. As a child caretaker and nurse, she was able to move freely, carry messages and provide shelter for the escaped enslaved hidden at her church before they boarded ships headed north.

Similar to other Black beneficial societies and business enterprises, The Tents provided burial insurance and mortgages to Black people at a time when these services were otherwise denied them. For a century, The Tents operated a nursing home without outside funding. The Tents was unique among organizations of the time: it was founded as an independent entity, rather than as a female chapter of a male organization, and its membership was open to Black women of all social classes. Throughout its existence, The Tents has been female-owned, operated and directed, providing medical care, housing and scholarships to the Black community. The Tents celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2017.24