Burroughs’s training school overwhelmingly produced trades workers, not missionaries or teachers

Evidence

In 1920 Burroughs reported to the Woman’s Convention that 200 students had graduated from the Training School. Although the school records are incomplete, they list eighty diplomas and eighty-four certificates awarded to students between 1911 and 1920. The records of students who graduated with diplomas or certificates reveal the preponderance of the trades department over the missionary and normal. Of the eighty diplomas awarded, only 13 percent went to students in missionary training, and only 9 percent to students in the normal department. Of the eighty-four certificates, 20 percent went to missionary students with 3 percent to normal. The trades department had awarded 78 percent of all diplomas and 77 percent of all certificates between 1911 and 1920. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1649

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader woman’s-club and Tuskegee-model industrial-education debate in this book and in Black education historiography (Washington vs. Du Bois).