Extending Booker T. Washington’s Vision in Mississippi: William H. Holtzclaw and the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an educator, reformer, and one of the most influential African American intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the first principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and was responsible for its development. Washington’s influence over Southern Black Education was extensive. He cultivated the spread of vocational schools for African American students throughout the South. Several of the schools established using his Tuskegee model still exist today. His vision of education for young Black men and women is very much in evidence in Mississippi. One of his chief lieutenants, Charles Banks, and the jewel in the crown of the Tuskegee Machine, Utica Normal Institute, were located in Mississippi. William Henry Holtzclaw, the son of former slaves and mentee of Washington, founded the Utica Normal & Industrial as a ‘Little Tuskegee’ in Utica in 1903. Now known as Hinds Community College’s Utica Campus, the campus retains its HBCU status and traditions. This presentation discusses Booker T. Washington and his influence on Southern Black Education. It evaluates the ‘Little Tuskegee’ concept and gives an overview of the Utica Institute from its founding in the Jim Crow-era South through the Civil Rights years and beyond.

Speakers Expertise:

Jean Greene is co-director of the Utica Institute Museum & Archives on the Utica campus of Hinds Community College. She is the retired director of the William H. Holtzclaw Library where she served for 19 years. Greene served as co-director of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant entitled "William Holtzclaw and The Black Man's Burden." This research project created a humanities course taught across disciplines to give students a broader understanding of William Holtzclaw and his pioneering efforts in African American education in rural Mississippi. She is currently researching information related to the schools spawned by Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute to create a repository of data about these "Little Tuskegees."