Janie Porter was born in Athens, Georgia on August 9, 1865, to a mother, Julia Porter, who had been emancipated from slavery just three months before. Ms. Porter worked as housekeeper for a white family who invited Janie to be educated along with their children, and Janie was later sent to college at Hampton Institute, a historically Black institution in Hampton, Virginia, where she trained as a schoolteacher. In 1890, Janie Porter Barrett (who had married a fellow Hampton alum) founded the Locust Street Social Settlement, a settlement modeled on Jane Addams’ Hull House that was first settlement house founded by and for Black Americans. Later in her career Porter Barrett founded and became the superintendent of the innovative and successful Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls from 1915 until her retirement in 1940 (Social Welfare History Project, 2017).

For more information, please read this full article on her work at the Social Welfare History Project.