The Jeanes Fellows Program is a partnership between the Dudley Flood Center and the Innovation Project (TIP) designed to provide consistent and intentional infrastructure to support community-school relationships using an equity lens.

The program will operationalize needed action from 3 foundational documents: 

• The Leandro Action Plan: Sound Basic Education for All: An Action Plan for North Carolina can be found here. A few key recommendations called for a qualified and well-prepared teacher in every classroom and finance and resource allocation. 
• DRIVE Task Force Final Report and Recommendations: a report with 10 key recommendations to increase teacher diversity. Recommendations include affordable postsecondary access, diversity goals for schools and districts, and support networks for educators of color.
• NC State Board of Education Statewide Strategic Plan: a plan grounded in the guiding principles of equity and the whole child with goals to eliminate opportunity gaps, improve school and district performance, and increase educator preparedness to meet the needs of every student, all to be fulfilled by 2025.

During the Jim Crow era in the American South, Jeanes Teachers, otherwise known as Jeanes Supervisors, were women of color who functioned as superintendents for black schools. Often beginning with little more than a school building and a single educator, Jeanes teachers worked tirelessly to benefit their communities through improving public health, living conditions, and teacher training. They developed self-improvement and canning clubs and did whatever was most needed in their communities. Jeanes teachers were driven by the informal motto to do “the next needed thing.”

Jeanes Teachers were funded through the Negro Rural School Fund, established by the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation in 1907 with an endowment of $1 million. Jeanes appointed an impressive list of educators and other leaders of the time to the fund’s board of trustees, including appointing Booker T. Washington as the chairman. The money from this fund was used to provide salaries for Jeanes Teachers and to support their efforts to strengthen their communities and schools. 

By 1909 -1910, there were 129 Jeanes Teachers operating in thirteen southern states. In 1915, after a plea from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina had thirty-six Jeanes teachers, more than any other state. 

Annie Wealthy Holland was a pioneer in creating teacher-leadership positions for people of color in North Carolina.  Taking advantage of funds from the Jeanes Foundation, Holland worked across the state to encourage local school districts to hire a Jeanes Teacher/Supervisor to lead instruction in the segregated schools for blacks. Before this role, she served as a Jeanes Teacher in Gates County Schools, where she immersed herself in the school and community, including cultivating agriculture clubs that would help the community be more self-sufficient and foster community pride.  A unique feature of the Jeanes Fund was to encourage these teacher leaders to develop ties to the community and to do the next needed thing – with great autonomy for determining the needs in curriculum, pedagogy, and other initiatives that would improve the lives of the students and the community.  Despite the difficult conditions related to being a woman of color in the Jim Crow South, the Division head, N.C. Newbold commented:  During Mrs. Holland’s work as State Supervisor of Negro Elementary Schools, she traveled throughout North Carolina meeting county superintendents, boards of education, leading white people and Negroes on many different occasions and in many kinds of work.  In a high degree, she was a peacemaker and organizer of real ability.”  Ms. Holland also was the “guiding star” in creating the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers in 1928.  The association honored her ten years later by planting a tree at Shaw University.  The now stately Annie Wealthy Holland tree and bench below continue to welcome all visitors at the entrance of the University.