Journal of History and Culture Journal of History and Culture

j o u r n a l o f h i s t o r y a n d c u l t u r e
in architecture. Tuskegee hired me as its first female tenure-track professor in 1991. Between 1967 and 2004, only
112 women graduated with the architecture degree from Tuskegee; only seven of those graduates earned the master
of architecture degree.
Washington’s architecture program was highly regarded as a cognitive developmental conceptualization in
the making of drawings necessary to produce architecture at Tuskegee. 36 This cognitive developmental method of
contracting eliminated the contractual separation of design and construction was inherent in Tuskegee’s architecture
program. By the 1920s, Tuskegee had given up the idea of maintaining the master builder training and had solidly
adopted the White, elite model of universities like Harvard, MIT and Yale. White schools were eager to distance
the role of the architect from that of the builder to the maximum extent possible. 37 At this point in White schools,
most students of color were a distinct minority, especially Black women. By the 1930s, the outcome of Black and
White architecture programs was to promote criteria that involved students in making professional architecture
judgments in their designs, formed in part through the process of socialization that occurs within the design studio
and schools and perpetuated within the architectural community as a whole. 38
Between Robert Taylor’s arrival at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in 1892 and Washington’s
death in 1915, design and construction of the Tuskegee campus was the largest concentrated physical enterprise
in America built from the ground up by Blacks for its intended Black use and occupancy. 39 By 1910 the Tuskegee
campus-building program was substantially complete, and the faculty and graduates were also building Black
churches and schools throughout the South using the master builder training. The master builder training passed on
specialized skills and knowledge from one generation to the next, gradually enhancing the profession through the
development and application of new techniques, often based on trial-and-error. 40 The biggest impact the Tuskegee
model had on institutional architecture was the establishment of Rosenwald Schools where Blacks built more than
5,300 “campuses.” 41 Those erected between 1913 and 1920 used plans designed by Tuskegee faculty. 42
W.E.B. Du Bois’ Views
The archival section of The Atlantic magazine online offered the essay “Of the Training of Black Men,” by
Du Bois that said Whites in the South and North refused to teach Blacks; if Blacks were to learn, Blacks must teach
themselves, and the most effective help that could be given to Blacks would be the establishment of schools to train
Black teachers. 43 Du Bois wrote in 1903 that as intelligence and wealth demanded, the educational system in the
South continued to omit Black women from industrial and manual training; simple schools should have taught Black
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