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Remembering An Educator for the Ages
Remembering An Educator for the Ages
By Pat Reilly
Tucked in a corner of the largest park in Manassas is a bronze statue of the facility’s namesake, educator Jennie Dean, her hand sweeping backward as if to present the foundations of an industrial school she founded in 1894.
The campus’ stone footprints appear small and inconsequential now, which belies the enormity of its impact for all of Northern Virginia for decades spanning the turn of the 20th Century.
That’s why Manassas drapery shop owner Mary Jones Owens has set out to retell Dean’s story to new generations in her Legacy and Honor project. Against all odds, Dean accomplished her own dream that helped others achieve theirs.
Jennie Serepta Dean was born near Sudley Springs in 1848, part of an enslaved family. Their log cabin was close enough to the Bull Run battlefield in 1861 that they could hear the cannons, smell the gun smoke and respond to the cries of wounded men.
The Deans were drafted to help care for the wounded and bury Confederate dead, Owens said.
After Emancipation, Jennie went to Washington, D.C. to work as a domestic. Owens said she joined the 19th Street Baptist Church, where she gained the missionary spirit, not just for spreading the faith, but education as well.
Her only education may have been at home or Sunday school. She sent money home to help buy farmland after her father, Charles, died. She helped to start three churches in the area that are still operating today. After purchasing hundreds of acres, she started the first secondary school for Black students in Northern Virginia.
Owens’ research indicated that with the backing of powerful women she met in D.C. and an Episcopal Church in Boston, Dean built the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth.
It’s a tribute to Dean’s charismatic six-year fundraising campaign that Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address at the official school opening in 1894. A school gateway, still standing in Dean Park, has Andrew Carnegie’s name on it. He may have given as much as $30,000 at the urging of friends, Owens found.
Owens knows that her own ancestors, the Peters family, sent a team of men to help build the school, as did others in the community. Neighbors contributed produce. Teachers worked for small pay. Parents had to pay fees for students to board and learn trades and they came from all over Virginia through the nearby train station. Students would be expected to pitch in and use their skills to support the school. Dean’s school expanded amid funding struggles for almost five decades.
Due to court-ordered changes in Virginia law, the school was taken over by the still segregated public system in 1938. It still was one of a few secondary schools for Blacks in a five-county area from Arlington to Fauquier. Much later, as integration finally came to state schools, the industrial school closed. Black students could go to public school near home free of charge.
This remarkable educator died in 1913 and is buried by the Mount Catharpin Baptist Church she helped found. So is Mary Jones Owens’ great-greatgrandfather. The elementary school near the Jennie Dean monument is named for her.
Mary Owens told Jennie Dean’s story in Warrenton at the John Barton Payne Building at 1 p.m. on May 31, an event sponsored by the AfroAmerican Historical Association (AAHAFauquier. org). The AAHA is moving from The Plains to a new permanent home in Warrenton and reopens on June 14, in time for the popular Juneteenth Street festival on Main Street.
