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Virginia Randolph (right), circa 1915-20 (Photo courtesy County of Henrico, Virginia, Historic Preservation and Museum Services)
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A cooking class at one of the industrial schools started by Virginia Randolph (Photo courtesy Jackson Davis Collection of African-American Photographs, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)
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Virginia Randolph in the doorway of Mountain Road School, 1911 (Photo courtesy Jackson Davis Collection of African-American Photographs, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)
Virginia Estelle Randolph (circa 1871-1958) is among the dozen women chosen for recognition in statue form by the Virginia Women’s Monument, named “Voices From the Garden,” to be placed in Capitol Square. After a groundbreaking in December, the long-planned project begins a phased installation this spring.
Randolph, a daughter of former slaves who was raised in challenging circumstances, inspired children to rise above their own background. She graduated from Richmond City Normal Colored School, and in 1890 entered Virginia State College in Ettrick but attended just two years before going to Goochland County to teach — at age 16, a year younger than the law allowed. Randolph moved in 1892 to a teaching position at the Mountain Road School in Henrico County.
She implemented a system in which children used both their minds and their energy. “I believe in educating the hands, the eyes, the feet and the soul,” she said.
In each day’s activities, Randolph brought an aspect that came loosely under the heading of “work,” such as gardening, woodworking, sewing, laundering or cooking, using everyday items rather than waiting for expensive materials that couldn’t be counted on to reach the racially segregated public schools. Her students made baskets from honeysuckle vines and simple clothes from bleached flour sacks and sugar bags. For cooking instruction, Randolph at least once borrowed a neighbor’s cookstove, still warm from making breakfast, because at the time her school didn’t have a proper stove. She spent her own money for supplies and obtained scrap material from the white schools for Mountain Road projects.
Some parents objected to what they viewed as lessons in menial jobs. Vocational learning seemed to point backward toward forced labor. One minister preached a sermon against Randolph’s methods. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Impressed by Randolph’s work, Henrico School Superintendent Jackson Davis wanted to communicate her methods to other county schools. The School Board agreed, but pulled out its collective empty pockets. Davis, not to be denied, visited Hampton Institute to investigate other funding methods and in 1908 advocated for Randolph to the recently established Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, also called the Negro Rural School Fund. Jeanes, the daughter of a large and prosperous Philadelphia Quaker family, established an organization to support black rural and community schools throughout the racially divided South. Her initial funding of $1 million would amount today to about $28 million. Jeanes placed Hampton Institute-trained educator Booker T. Washington on the board to assist in choosing candidates for support.
Randolph’s work as the first Jeanes Supervisor Industrial Teacher — a position she held for more than 40 years — began on Oct. 26, 1908. She traveled throughout the state, as well as in North Carolina and Georgia. By 1914, 118 Jeanes teachers were working in 119 counties throughout the South.
As writers Maureen Egan and Susan Winiecki (the latter this magazine’s associate publisher/editorial director) note in their recent book “Richmond’s Culinary History: Seeds of Change,” the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 brought organized rural, vocational education to white students. Randolph had orchestrated such a program 20 years before, and thus by 1916, Henrico operated 50 gardens and 18 industrial schools for both young and adult African-Americans, and 125 students were in poultry and canning programs.
Mountain Road School expanded to seven rooms, including a dormitory available to children for whom traveling each day to school would be a hardship. Randolph took children into her own home, at one time living with 17, and used her own private bus to ferry them to and from school. After the original Mountain Road school buildings burned in 1929, an eight-room brick building, complete with a library and small auditorium, replaced them.
The William E. Harmon Foundation Award that was presented to Randolph in 1926 (Image courtesy County of Henrico, Virginia, Historic Preservation and Museum Services)
Randolph’s citations and awards mounted, and in 1926, she was among the recipients of the first William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes. Richmond newspaper publisher John Stewart Bryan pinned the recognition to her. She wore it on a chain around her neck, but hidden beneath her blouse, for fear she might be thought vain.
She retired from her 57 years of service in 1949 and died March 16, 1958. Her former office, the Virginia Randolph Home Economics Cottage, at 2200 Mountain Road in Glen Allen, is a National Historic Landmark, and it opened in 1970 as a museum to Randolph’s life and legacy. Her body received re-burial there. The property is today the home of two campuses, the Academy at Virginia Randolph, an alternative school with an emphasis on vocational and technical training, and the Virginia Randolph Education Center, with programs for students with autism and other disabilities.
The 1956 formation of the Virginia Randolph Foundation sought a perpetual memorial in her honor, and in 1963 started an annual scholarship. The fund, for college-bound, community- and service-oriented Henrico public high school seniors, came under the auspices of the Community Foundation in 2008.
In a 1993 Richmond magazine interview, museum curator William Cosby, who knew Randolph in her later years, said it’s difficult for people to fully understand her contributions. “She went to the church revival meetings to tell parents to get their children into school and keep them there,” Cosby said. “She encouraged parents to help themselves, to do for themselves. If you couldn’t afford to pay her, she’d take vegetables from the farmers that she’d use to feed the kids in the dormitory.”
The Virginia Women’s Monument Commission is raising $200,000 for each statue. The memorial’s fabricator, New York City-based StudioEIS (known here for the Thomas Jefferson statue in the Virginia Capitol welcome center), is working with Richmond’s 1717 Design Group to create the memorial and plaza.
The Virginia Randolph Museum (804-652-1485) is open Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m., and by appointment. For more information or to donate to the Virginia Women’s Monument, visit womensmonumentcom.virginia.gov.
