Explorations in Black Leadership

Co-Directed by Phyllis Leffler & Julian Bond

Slater Fund, John F.

The fund was established in 1882 to support the industrial and vocational higher education of newly freed African Americans in the South, with an early emphasis on training teachers. John F. Slater, a Connecticut textiles manufacturer, initiated the fund with a $1 million gift, and by 1931 it had contributed over $2.2 million to expand higher education for blacks in the South. In 1932, it merged with the Peabody Fund, the Jeanes Fund, and the Virginia Randolph Fund to form the Southern Education Foundation, Inc.