Barbour, Luther H. was superintendent of Durham County Schools from 1925-1943. Carrie Jordan served as Jeanes supervising teacher under his administration. Just before his selection as superintendent the district shrank, with the city of Durham absorbing East and West Durham and several suburbs, which put the majority of Durham’s black students in the city. He emphasized the need for good school attendance by black students, with the proviso that their duties in the tobacco harvest might require creative class scheduling, just as it did for their white counterparts.
Credle, William Frontis (W. F.) was supervisor of the Rosenwald Fund in the Division of Negro Education, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. He and George Davis succeeded Charles Moore. Credle was white; Davis was black. N. C. Newbold explained this decision in terms of each one being able to address audiences of their own race.
Davis, George Edward, along with W. F. Credle, replaced Charles Moore as state inspector of Negro schools in the Division of Negro Education, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Davis, an African American, reported to Credle, who was white. Davis, a former professor, was inclined to take Booker T. Washington’s approach to racial harmony: “‘My attitude in all my work has been conciliatory—not truckling, if you please—but an attitude of patient waiting and persistent working.” (Leloudis, p. 222)
Day, Mattie N. was the second Jeanes supervisor for Durham County, beginning in 1917. With the start of World War I, she and the homemakers clubs she supervised worked hard to create a stockpile of home-canned goods in response to fear of food shortages.
Holland, Annie Wealthy (1871-1934) was born near the Virginia plantation of the Wealthy family, where her grandmother had been a slave. She was named after the plantation’s mistress, whom her family held in high regard. Born in the years just after the Civil War, she grew up in an environment in which “reconstruction began first in the schoolhouses and not in the state houses,” and throughout her life, she worked to improve the lives of her neighbors through education and coordinated effort. This accomplished woman was the first state supervisor of Negro elementary education in the Division of Negro Education, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and in this capacity, she was possibly the first professional black women in North Carolina state government.
Holland worked as a teacher and school principal, including a stint in a rural school. Around 1911 she became a Jeanes teaching supervisor, in which capacity she worked in both North Carolina and Virginia. She became the Jeanes Fund’s North Carolina state demonstration agent in 1915. In this position she was largely in charge of the state’s black elementary schools, constantly traveling across the state to lead meetings, fundraise, develop homemakers’s clubs, and improve teacher knowledge through demonstration classes and the formation of training schools. Holland also founded North Carolina’s black Parent-Teacher Association, called the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, to coordinate school improvement efforts, among other goals.
Holland emphasized that not only must black teachers be excellent educators, they must balance unstinting advocacy of black education with refraining from making whites nervous about it. She demanded that they “must be willing to work” to serve their students and the black community at large. Her prominence as an educator is indicated by her presence in Five North Carolina Negro Educators, a 1939 volume edited by Nathan C. Newbold.
Holton, Holland (1888-1947) served as supervisor of the Durham County schools from 1919-1921. He grew up in Durham, where he received much of his education, including a B.A. from Trinity College (later Duke University). In addition to his stint as head of the county school system, he served in a variety of other educational roles across the state, most notably as director of the Trinity College Summer School from 1920 to 1947.
Jordan, Carrie T., the third of Durham County's Jeanes teachers (1923-1926), came from a family deeply invested in education. Her husband, Dr. Dock J. Jordan, led the National Training school for teachers at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), and her father, Rev. Lawrence Thomas, preached at the oldest black church in Atlanta and was a founder of Morris Brown College. She was college educated and had extensive teaching experience when she took on the Jeanes supervising teacher position. During her three-year tenure, the city of Durham began annexing parts of the county, changing some schools from county to city jurisdiction. Among other innovations, she introduced the county commencement tradition, which celebrated the educational successes of the children of the black community.
Moore, Charles H. (1853-1952), the first state inspector of Negro schools, was hired in 1915 by the North Carolina Teachers’ Association to be Newbold’s assistant. Born a slave, he was educated at Howard University and Amherst. He was an educator himself and was involved in establishing both the North Carolina Teachers’ Association and the Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (now North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University). His outspokenness in pursuit of fair funding for black schools eventually led to his ouster in 1920, as it caused too much friction with whites, including his supervisor, Nathan Newbold.
Newbold, Nathan Carter (1871-1957), who began his career as a schoolteacher, is best known for his work as an educational administrator and as the model of a white progressive southern educator of his era. He worked within the strictures of the racial climate of the Jim Crow era to increase black educational opportunities in North Carolina, serving first as North Carolina associate supervisor of rural education and then as director of the Division of Negro Education in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which he helped create. Newbold worked with philanthropies like the Jeanes and Rosenwald funds to secure funding for black education in North Carolina. He was appointed to be the Jeanes Fund’s associate supervisor of rural education in 1913.
Taylor, Gertrude Tandy started work in September 1926 as the new Jeanes teacher for Durham County at age twenty-six. She had been a teacher in the Mill Grove Colored School before her promotion. Mrs. Taylor was a graduate of Livingstone College and went on to earn a B.S. in education from Ohio State University and an M.A. from the University of Michigan. Mrs. Taylor’s husband, Dr. James T. Taylor, taught at Durham Normal School from 1926 to 1960. Mrs. Taylor worked as the Durham Jeanes teacher for almost twenty years under Superintendent Barbour, returning to teaching when she left that position.
Wannamaker, William Hane (1873-1958) became the dean of Trinity College (later Duke University) in 1917 and served as a member of the school boards of both Durham County (1916-1918) and the city of Durham (1923-1947). He was chairman of the city board from 1925-1947.