History Focus for 2020 ECW Annual Meeting

BISHOP TUTTLE MEMORIAL TRAINING SCHOOL

by Lynn R. Hoke, Diocesan Archivist

What follows is a slightly revised version of my “story” about how our Diocesan ECW commemorated the Bishop Tuttle Training School in 2009. Built, furnished and funded primarily by members of the National Woman’s Auxiliary and local branches, the Tuttle School was a national institution from 1925 to 1941 to train young black women for various positions in both social work and church work. Today, the durable 1925 school building remains as Tuttle Hall near the main campus entrance of Saint Augustine’s University.

If you would like to know more about the Tuttle School, I will gladly send you via e-mail a digitized copy of one or both of the following: (1) the 58-page commemorative booklet (cover photo right), with a wealth of vintage photographs and documentary information; or (2) the 16-page narrative history that I presented at the 2010 Tri-History Conference, which our diocese hosted for the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, the National Episcopal Historians and Archivists, and the Episcopal Women’s History Project.*

Click here to see a slideshow of images
from the Bishop Tuttle Memorial Training School

My research on the Tuttle School began in 2007, as part of a broader survey of the history of African American church women in this Diocese. For Dr. Pat Page, convener of the Southern Episcopal Women’s History Project, it began several years earlier, when she was asked to conduct an oral history interview with one of the last Tuttle School graduates. For Dr. John Kayser, a professor at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work, it began a decade ago, while he was investigating his profession’s history of segregation in education.

Unbeknownst to each other, Pat and John both interviewed Fannie Jeffrey at her home in Maryland, John in 2001, and Pat in 2003. Not only was Fannie Jeffrey one of the last Tuttle School graduates, she also had spent a year in New York City, at Windham House, the Tuttle School’s sister institution set up originally for training white women church workers. After this training, Jeffrey was hired by the Woman’s Auxiliary as the national Negro secretary. One of her first tasks in this new position was closing the Tuttle Training School in 1941.

Pat Page’s interview was arranged by the African American Episcopal Historical Collection, a joint effort of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church and Virginia Theological Seminary. The Rev. Lawrence Harris, Rector of St. Barnabas’ Church in Upper Marlboro, MD, suggested Fannie Jeffrey as one who had a story to tell. When asked to recommend someone to conduct this interview, Barbara Schnorrenberg, then President of the Episcopal Women’s History Project, suggested Pat, who was herself a 1946 graduate of Windham House.

John Kayser first learned of the Tuttle School while researching the history of the University of North Carolina’s School of Social Welfare in the files of the Rockefeller Foundation Archives. Further independent research led him to Fannie Jeffrey, who had lived in Denver before she enrolled at the Tuttle School, and who was, coincidentally, the aunt of a friend of a faculty colleague. After doing an informal interview in Denver, and before conducting the official oral history interview in Maryland, he discovered the Tuttle School collection at the Archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. A review of these files enabled him to supplement Fannie’s personal story for use in professional papers and conference presentations.

In August 2007, Pat and I visited the Saint Augustine’s archives, where we found numerous Tuttle School articles in the bi-monthly St. Augustine’s Record. A month later I made a research trip to Austin and spent three days reviewing a portion of the Tuttle School collection. With photocopies in hand, I was almost ready to do a short history. Then in October, I ran “yet one more” Internet search and up popped “Tuttle School” in the title of an academic paper John had presented in Canada. Through his university I made email contact and learned that he had never visited the Tuttle School site on Saint Augustine’s campus. He enthusiastically welcomed my still-vague proposal for participating in some kind of program, sometime in the future. By September 2008 we began planning in earnest, after learning that John would be taking a sabbatical in Spring 2009. He participated in our Commemoration, and also spent some days in both the Diocesan and Saint Augustine’s College archives, thanks to a research grant from the Southern Episcopal Women’s History Project.

* For Tuttle School history requests, please email me before or after the ECW Annual Meeting: lynn.hoke@episdionc.org