Manassas Industrial School Home
CONTESTED MEMORY
In March 1998 the Manassas Journal Messenger announced that a new group of letters had been found spotlighting the history of the Manassas Industrial School.
These letters, more than one thousand in number, had been purchased by an individual collector who plans to use them as the nucleus of a genealogical history of a former principle of the Manassas Industrial School and his family. This work has yet to be completed but the newspaper article is one of many articles about the Manassas Industrial School. This school has been the source of great community pride and it is perceived as a lasting monument to the racial cooperation and harmony in Manassas. There is a sense of romanticism among many of the local residents who form the two different Jennie Dean societies that exist in the area. It is also interesting to note that these two societies often clash about the methods that should be used to preserve the memory of the school and Jennie Dean herself. Despite their differences in opinion, both sides tend to look at the school as a monument to the achievements of whites and blacks working together for a common goal.
MONUMENT TO DISHARMONY
This site and my work attempts to tell a more complicated story about the Manassas Industrial School. This is a story of conflict over race and class but also a conflict over the changing ideas from the Victorian era to the era of Modernism. The original research was completed in 1998 as a requirement for a graduate research seminar with Professor Jefferey Stewart at George Mason University. I return to this project for the purpose of completing a course on Creating Digital History at Mason. I am surprised that there is still little work that has been done to date that tells the complex story of this school and the people involved in its founding and the day to day operation of this school. It was the only school for African Americans in Northern Virginia for post-elementary education. It attracted important champions that supported the school and it remained an important private institution until it was taken over by the public schools in xxxx. (Back to top)