Perils of Accommodation: The Case of Joseph W. Holley

Abstract

This study examines accommodationism, a tactic of racial uplift used by black school founders and teachers in the Jim Crow South. For founders, accommodationism was a dangerous process of collaboration, resistance, and compromise. The subject under study is Joseph Winthrop Holley. Born in South Carolina, Holley studied in the North at Phillips Academy and Lincoln University. Despite a liberal education, Holley returned to the South and founded a Bible and industrial school. Holley was the most conservative founder of his day. His life and work take us beyond the Washington–Du Bois paradigm and help to clarify the work and meaning of accommodationism. The study also evaluates the degree to which conservative forms of schooling became a means for social control.