The Tallulah Falls Industrial School and Craft Education: Investigating the Role of Place (and Space) in the Educational Reform Efforts of “Good” White Clubwomen During the Progressive Era in Georgia

Abstract

This article focuses on the reform-driven efforts of three elite White women from Athens, Georgia, during the progressive era. Laura Blackshear, Mary Ann Rutherford Lipscomb, and Sarah Hunter Moss were pivotal in the creation and development of the Tallulah Falls Industrial School, which aimed to educate children in the North Georgia mountains through industrial training, including craft education. My investigation of the historical and place-based context that formed the basis for rural reform efforts suggests that practices aimed at “good,” such as building model industrial schools in rural Georgia, were intertwined with efforts to maintain systems of White supremacy, patriarchy, and classism. Using Massey’s theorization of spatial politics, I highlight how Blackshear, Lipscomb, and Moss’s efforts were entangled in the complicated spatial relations of the places in which they pursued reform, and I suggest that art educators become attuned to and responsible for the spatial contexts they are navigating.