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Refining Racial Accommodationism in the Jim Crow South: The Case of Joseph W. Holley, 
Accommodationist or a Black Apostle of White Oppression? 

Thomas V. O’Brien 
The Ohio State University at Mansfield 

 
 The goal of this paper is to interrogate the meaning 
of accommodationism, a tactic used by black educators in the 
segregated South who interacted with whites to bring about 
improved school opportunities, and more equity for the black 
masses.  To reach this goal, the paper explores the life and 
work of Joseph W. Holley (1870-1958).   Holley is 
considered the most conservative black educator of his era. In 
1903 Holley founded a private Bible and manual training 
school in Albany, Georgia.  Under his leadership the school 
eventually became a college and part of the public university 
system. In his 43 years as president Holley called for 
differentiated curricula for the races, promoting industrial 
training and later vocational education. Holley accepted 
segregation as the way of life in the Jim Crow South and 
made sure that the programs at his school in Albany 
conformed to the region’s racial etiquette. As inroads were 
made toward disrupting segregation in the 1930 and 40s 
(Missouri v. ex. el Gaines, 1938), Holley took his stand with 
conservatives, and spoke out against racial mixing. 
Moreover, Holley was late to embrace the logic of Plessy v. 
Ferguson (1896), which called for equal but separate 
accommodations for the races. In the 1950s, after he had 
been forced to step down as president of the school he 
founded, he became well known as a black segregationist.  
 Accommodationism is routinely associated with the 
approach used by Booker T. Washington, founder of 
Tuskegee Institute. Washington’s accommodationism is 
routinely contrasted with the confrontational tactics of 
W.E.B. Du Bois.  The literature on black schooling in the Jim 
Crow South is rich with examples of accomplished 
accommodationists (Gilmore, 1996, LeLoudis, 1996,  
Fairclough, 2001;  Harlan, 1983;  Bond, 1939;  Litwack, 
1998).  There is very little scholarship, however, about black 
educators who publicly embraced a similar curriculum, but 
may have operated for different goals and purposes.  While 
nearly every African American educator in the region had to 
“put on ol’ massa,” not all black educators privately rejected 
their public rhetoric or intended to mislead.  Some, it seems, 
may have even believed in the racial superiority of whites, 
and implemented a curriculum, and taught and operated their 
schools on such assumptions.  Holley may have been one of 
them. Nevertheless, a number of scholars have described 
Holley as an extreme accommodationist (Grant, 1993; Cell, 
1983; Litwack, 1998).  The historical record of Holley’s life 
and work presents an opportunity to determine the suitability 
of this portrayal and label.   A Note on Sources 
Holley’s correspondence and papers pertaining to his work as 
an educator and school founder have been located in a 
number of places including at The Rhode Island Historical 
Society, Albany State University, The Georgia Archives, The 
Albany and Macon Public Libraries, The Atlanta University 
Center, The University of Georgia, Phillips Academy--

Andover, and Fisk and Lincoln Universities. I have visited 
each of these sites.  Holley also wrote five short books in his 
last 10 years --between 1948 and 1958 (an autobiography, a 
monograph on his views on slavery, two pieces describing 
his religious views, and a book on segregation and 
education)—which I make use of to understand his social 
theorizing.   
 Holley called for blacks to be practicing Christians 
and to be industrious, and on these fronts he was well within 
the borders of accommodationism.  (Indeed, calls for “true” 
Christian practice were even within the borders of more 
radical spokesmen for racial uplift, Blum, 2005).  Holley 
cited W.E.B. Du Bois in his rationale for a high quality 
Christian training:  “Honesty, truth, and purity are seldom 
taught, for neither preacher nor people have come to realize 
that these virtues are essential to a Christian life . . . . What 
kind of school is needed for this problem? Certainly the basic 
need here is a training of the heart as well as the mind and 
hand” (Holley, 1948, 56)    
 Like other accommodationists, Holley accepted the 
reality that blacks should be educated separately from whites. 
Unlike them, however, he argued, sometimes forcefully, that 
blacks should fill subordinate roles in society.  The races 
came from vastly different backgrounds, Holley maintained, 
and were destined to have different futures. Placing both 
groups in one system, he argued in 1936, and offering them 
similar types of school experiences as whites, and--as 
reformers from the northern philanthropies were advocating--
was ill advised. It “would be unfair to both races to establish 
and operate mixed schools here in Georgia,” he declared. 
What if two young men had studied agricultural economics? 
he asked. The white lad could find appropriate work in a 
bank, but the black lad could work only as a custodian or run 
the elevator. “It’s not fair for my boy to fit himself for 
service in a field where the door is closed,” asserted Holley. 
Instead, a system of black schooling should be based on 
blacks’ “special needs.” “Courses of study designed for the 
white children of New England are not suited for the needs of 
Negro boys and girls in Georgia. The great mass[es]… need 
to be trained in agriculture, the mechanical arts, the trades 
and industries, and in the art of homemaking” (Holley, 1948, 
88. Holley’s 1936 “Statesboro” address is reprinted on pages 
88-90.) 
 
 Holley’s argument for such a program contained an 
economic rationale: “We must plant ourselves firmly in the 
soil and in the fundamental and basic industries of the 
country, or we will be lost in the battle for economic 
security.” (Holley, 1955, 17). “Economic prosperity,” he 
wrote, “is the desideratum for the student-products of our 
school system.” (Holley, 1955, 25).   



20 

 Elements of Holley’s argument reflected his call for 
efficiency: Black students must be prepared “to earn a better 
living.  To accomplish this,” he continued, “we must give 
them selective training in those vocations which they are 
most needed. The field of cultural pursuits offer very little, 
presently, in terms of economic security; they are 
overcrowded, or they are being superceded by competing 
interests” (Holley, 1955, 26). 
Holley’s words also smacked of white supremacy: “The 
educational requirements of the people who are only a few 
hundred years out of the jungle are not the same as those who 
have had thousands of years of civilization. Their future 
prospects are not the same.   . . . The question is not one of 
human equality, but of difference in basic needs” (Holley 
1948, 87-8). 
 A number of indicators suggest that Holley was 
sincere in his belief in white superiority.  First, he used this 
type of rhetoric often with both blacks and whites. Second 
Holley genuinely felt that Christianity was the source of 
civilization, and that Europeans and their descendants had 
embraced it for a much longer period than Africans and their 
descendents. While visiting Africa in 1928, for example, he 
wrote: “It is a gracious providence that has delivered the 
American negroe [sic] from such a background, as we have 
seen him living in absolute filth in their native huts our 
sympathies have certainly gone out to them. We long to see 
the day come when they will be able to realize the more 
abundant life on this earth (Holley to Hazard, 1928).   Third, 
there is no record that I can find that Holley thought 
otherwise. No private diary entry, no commentary from a 
peer, nothing. To the contrary Holley seemed to embrace 
white supremacy: A.C. Searles, a student at Holley’s 
institution GNAC in the 1940s, occasionally served as 
Holley’s chauffeur. Alone at one point with Holley, Searles 
asked, “Since there ain’t nobody here but us, tell me the 
truth. You don’t believe deep down in your heart all those 
things you say to white folks to raise money, do you?”  
Holley’s reply disappointed Searles: “I certainly do, replied 
Holley, “The good white folks are the best friends the 
Negroes ever had” (Holley quoted by Searles in Fairclough, 
2001, 34-5). 
 One could argue here that Holley was “wearing the 
mask” to sure up his relationship with his principal 
benefactors, and thus serve his people. Even alone with a 
black student, Holley may have chosen to reply as he did to 
keep his cover. But unlike other black educators of the time 
who functioned as double agents, the archival evidence 
suggests that Holley prized his own success over that of the 
black community he ostensibly served. His ultimate loyalties 
were to the status quo and to those who supported and 
promoted his enterprise.  Holley had overcome tremendous 
odds in establishing a school in Albany, but Holley was 
convinced of the inferiority of the black race.  He believed 
blacks to be defective personally, socially and culturally, 
uncivilized without Christianity, and in possession of lower 
intellectual capacity than whites. In reaching these 
conclusions, Holley made a grave mistake in confusing the 
conditions of poverty and oppression with the causes.   

 Accommodationism in the Jim Crow South assumed 
a variety of forms.  Accommodationists “put on ol’ massa” 
for the collective good of the blacks masses to win favors and 
concessions from whites in order to improve the education, 
health, and well-being of blacks.  Accommodationists, such 
as Booker T. Washington, William Councill, Beulah Rucker 
Oliver, and Lucy Laney, for example, believed very little of 
their own rhetoric, which was designed to mislead.  While 
most accommodationists stressed economics over politics in 
their public rhetoric intended for whites, there was a political 
promise of a broad education that drove their actual activity 
“on the ground” (Butchart, 2004).   
 This study finds characterizations of Holley as an 
accommodationist—or even as an extreme accommod- 
ationist” --unsupported by the historical record.   Holley 
publicly and privately believed fundamentally in white 
superiority and promoted a curriculum congruent with this 
belief for blacks. Holley’s case helps clarify the term 
accommodationism. It also provides a useful counter-
example to those black educators described in the literature 
who functioned with clarity of vision, operating for uplift and 
the common good of the black masses.   In doing so, it puts 
in high relief the tough, cautious work of other black 
educators who sought equality and opportunity for those in 
their communities.  Their work takes on even more meaning 
when we explore Holley’s story (Butchart, 2004).    
 The Holley story also gives us insights into less 
praiseworthy educators, who, I feel, we must get to know 
well.  Understanding educational misdeeds, some might 
argue, is an inefficient use of an educational historian’s time 
and energy. The focus, some contend, should be on curricula 
that work, on “best practice,” and on stories of success. In 
contrast, I suggest—in closing—that critiquing flawed 
human activity, and figuring out how and why they operated 
as they did, provides researchers, scholars, and policy makers 
with critical information about the obstacles to “what works” 
so they can act to not only to make progress possible, but to 
also make it more probable.  
 

References 
 
Blum, Edward, J. (2005).  “Religion and the Sociological 

Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Sociation Today, 
Spring, 3(1), 
www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v31/blum.htm 

Bond, Horace Mann (1939/69).   Negro Education in 
Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel (New York: 
Atheneum.  

Butchart, Ronald, (2004). Private communication via email, 
July. 

Cell, John W. (1993) The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: 
The Origins of The Way It Was in the South.  

Fairclough, Adam (2001). Teaching Equality: Black Schools 
in the Age of Jim Crow. Athens, GA: University of 
Georgia Press.  

Harlan, Louis, (1983). Booker T. Washington: Wizard of 
Tuskegee. New York: Oxford.  

 

http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v31/blum.htm


21 

Holley, Joseph, H. (1948). You Can’t Build a Chimney form 
the Top. New York: William-Frederick.  

Holley, Joseph, H. (1955). Education and the Segregation 
Issue.  New York: William-Frederick.  

Holley to Hazard, (1928). Extract from letter of J.W. Holley, 
October 10, 1928. Carline Hazard Papers, Misc. A-H, 
Box 1, Folder 38, University of Rhode Island Special 
Collections. 

Gilmore, Glenda, E., (1996). Gender and Jim Crow (Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.   

Grant, Donald, L. (1993), The Way It Was In The South: The 
Black Experience in Georgia. (New York: Birch Lane 
Press, 1993), 241, 357-8;  

LeLoudis, James L. (1996). Schooling the New South: 
Pedagogy, Self and Society, 1880-1920  Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1996 

Litwack, Leon F. (1998). Trouble in Mind: Black 
Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: 
Knopf.   

Missouri v. ex. el Gaines (1938).  
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 


