Mount Meigs Colored Institute

The Mount Meigs Colored Institute was a reform school founded by Cornelia Bowen for African-Americans in Mount Meigs, Alabama, an unincorporated community in Montgomery County.

Mount Meigs Colored Institute, 1919

The school was founded in 1888 as a single-room school; four years later, its students moved into a two-story facility built for the purpose. The school's models were Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute, and it advocated vocational schooling, teaching such skills as farming, carpentry, blacksmithing—the hope was that the school would be able to provide its own food and that students would contribute to white and black communities.

The board that ran the school consisted of twelve people: six whites, all from out of state, and six blacks, all local, including Booker T. Washington. For all practical purposes the school in its day-to-day operation was run by African-Americans. It proved harder than expected to make the school as financially independent as was envisioned; support came through the efforts of Bowen, who proved a tireless fundraiser and got the Alabama Federation of Colored Women's Clubs to support the school. With their help additional acreage was acquired; the clubs were particularly appalled by the numbers of black young men in the area who ended up incarcerated in adult prisons, and supporting the school allowed young boys to stay out of prison—one such student was Satchel Paige.[1]

By 1908 a second institution was opened, the later state-run Mount Meigs Campus.