Thomas Jefferson Edwards (October 1881–12 December 1958), educator, was born in Henrico County and was the son of William Edwards and Ann E. Smith Edwards. At various times he gave his birth date as 15 October and 28 October, and in several official documents the age reported suggests a later birth year of 1882. Edwards matriculated at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) in 1899 and graduated in 1905 with a wheelwright's certificate and an academic diploma. From 1905 to 1907 he served as the financial secretary at the Topeka Industrial and Educational Institute, in Kansas.
Edwards began teaching wheelwrights at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee University), in Alabama, in 1907. From 1909 to 1912 he worked with the Macon County board of education as a field agent for the institute and then for two years as a Jeanes supervisor for industrial education in Tallapoosa County. During that time Edwards wrote almost a dozen articles for Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute's Southern Workman in which he analyzed the labor resources and working conditions of Alabama's African American farming community and described his efforts to organize agricultural production and improve educational facilities for rural black youths. In Tuscaloosa County on 20 June 1914 he married Buena Vista Williams, a teacher. Their four daughters and two sons included the singer and songwriter Thomas Jefferson "Tommy" Edwards (1922–1969).
On 1 November 1914 Edwards became president of the Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia, which operated the Virginia Manual Labor School on a Hanover County farm it owned. The reform school offered a safe environment, an academic education, and training in various trades that instilled a work ethic and emphasized moral instruction. Sustained by private subscriptions and supplemental state aid, it was Virginia's only such school for African American adolescent boys, most of whom had been sentenced to jail or were assigned to the school by county courts or legal guardians. During his first year on the job, Edwards also served temporarily as the director of the nearby Industrial Home School for Colored Girls until educator and social reformer Janie Porter Barrett took charge in 1915.
When Edwards became president of the association, the Virginia Manual Labor School enrolled 185 boys and was completing construction of two new dormitories, a trades building, and several other buildings and improvements. Despite the expansion, and even though fifty students were then on parole, the school had to turn away twenty-five boys for want of space. In his first biennial report to the General Assembly in 1915, Edwards recommended that the state increase its appropriation in order to allow the school to accommodate 200 students. At conferences he publicized the school's work. In January 1917 Edwards delivered an address on the Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia at the annual Virginia Conference of Charities and Correction. His speech, published in the Southern Workman with the title "Helping Negro Boys in Virginia," underlined the importance of the school's 1,400-acre working farm in providing healthy exercise while the students learned good work habits and the dignity of labor. The farm played a crucial role in sustaining the reformatory, and he kept a careful eye on its operations.
Edwards was responsible for every aspect of managing the school, including ensuring the welfare of delinquent boys from eight to seventeen years old who were committed for offenses ranging from minor misdemeanors to serious violent crimes. Edwards provided for their health, safety, food, clothing, housing, recreation, education, religious instruction, and discipline. Believing that the unfenced farm should give students a second chance rather than merely punish them, he ended flogging and replaced handcuffs and chains with a guarded room for unruly boys. Edwards created an honor system and a merit system to reward good behavior. The work, curriculum, and recreational activities such as the school band and drill battalion all emphasized discipline and cooperation. Because many of the boys could not read or write when they arrived, Edwards combined academic courses with practical instruction in telling time, counting money, and using rulers and yardsticks. He encouraged his students to draw inspiration from Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery (1901).
Edwards had difficulty retaining competent staff during World War I and struggled with high costs, a fire, and the influenza epidemic during the winter of 1918–1919. In October 1920 the state government took over the reformatory, valued then at about $200,000, and renamed it the Virginia Manual Labor School for Colored Boys (and later the Hanover Juvenile Correctional Center). Edwards remained in charge with the new title of principal and cultivated friendly relations with state officials and the governor's office. By April 1923 he and his family resided on the campus that housed and educated 215 boys in twenty-five buildings and employed 28 people, including his wife and a sister. A brother oversaw the Industrial, Vocational, and Educational Department, which integrated academic study with instruction in trades, farming, gardening, and domestic work. The Manual Labor School, by 1926 valued at $350,000, was often overcrowded and drew deeply on the school's resources, but Edwards boasted that three-quarters of the several thousand boys who had passed through the institution did not become repeat offenders.
In February 1927 Edwards received permission to remove his family from the campus, and in January 1928 the board accepted his resignation effective 20 March. He moved to Henrico County to teach in the public schools, at Quioccasin Elementary School for ten years, at Springfield School through the 1949–1950 academic year, and then back at Quioccasin for one year until he retired in 1951. Thomas Jefferson Edwards died in a Richmond nursing home on 12 December 1958 and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Quioccasin Baptist Church Cemetery, in Henrico County.
Sources Consulted:
Self-reported birth dates of 28 October 1881 in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), Record Group 163, and of 15 October 1881 in World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), Record Group 147, both National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; variant birth date of 15 Oct. 1882 in Death Certificate, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA), and Oct. 1882 in United States Census Schedules, Elizabeth City Co., 1900, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, NARA; Tuscaloosa Co., Ala., Marriage Register (Colored), 7:233; Edwards's publications include articles in Southern Workman 40 (1911): 459–462, 533–536, 559–561, 635–638, 672–675, ibid. 41 (1912): 204–207, 490–494, 503–507, ibid. 42 (1913): 597–604, and ibid. 46 (1917): 490–499; Edwards's career highlighted in Southern Workman 39 (1910): 641, ibid. 43 (1914): 647, ibid. 44 (1915): 125, 359–360, ibid. 45 (1916): 323, ibid. 50 (1921): 344–345, ibid. 52 (1923): 401–402, and ibid. 55 (1926): 376–377; Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia biennial Reports (1914–1915), 5–13, (1916–1917), 5–9, (1917–1919), 3–11; Virginia Manual Labor School for Colored Boys biennial Reports (1921–1923), 5–17, (1923–1926), 5–19; Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia Board of Trustees Minute Book (1905–1942), 6 Jan. 1928, and Virginia Manual Labor School for Colored Boys Executive Committee Minute Book (1922–1940), 3 Feb. 1927, both Department of Corrections, Record Group, LVA; Don Gunter, "Back in the Game," Broadside (summer 2008): 3 (portrait); obituaries in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 Dec. 1958, and Richmond News Leader, 15 Dec. 1958 (both with age seventy-six at death).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter.
How to cite this page:
Donald W. Gunter, "Thomas Jefferson Edwards (1881–1958)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 ({url}, accessed [today's date]).
Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.
