TAGS:<\/strong> Dr. Orie Latham Hatcher ; PMSS Rural Youth Guidance Institute ; Glyn Morris ; social service ; Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth ; Eleanor Roosevelt ; World War II ; Southern Women’s Alliance ; women’s education ; Virginia Bureau of Vocations for Women ; Southern Women\u2019s Educational Alliance <\/span><\/p>\n Orie Latham Hatcher worked with Glyn Morris<\/a> to establish the Pine Mountain Rural Youth Guidance Institute, 1935.\u00a0During her lifetime, Orie Latham Hatcher made\u00a0extraordinary contributions\u00a0as an\u00a0English scholar and a pioneer in vocational guidance. Among\u00a0those contributions was her assistance in creating\u00a0the Guidance Institute, a vocational guidance program for rural youth\u00a0that was begun\u00a0at the Pine Mountain Settlement School by Glyn Morris<\/a>.<\/p>\n Born\u00a0in\u00a01868, Miss Hatcher had a quick intelligence\u00a0and\u00a0grew up in an environment that encouraged intellectual\u00a0pursuits\u00a0and social service. Her father, Dr. William Eldridge Hatcher, was a\u00a0well-known and highly respected pastor of the Grace Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia.\u00a0Her mother, Oranie Hatcher, wrote books, pamphlets and articles, mostly\u00a0focused on religion, and was trustee of Hartshorn Memorial College, a Richmond institution\u00a0for\u00a0the exclusive education of African-American women.<\/p>\n At the young age of fifteen Hatcher\u00a0was the youngest graduate of the Richmond Female Institute. She stayed\u00a0on to teach at the Institute until the fall of 1885, when, assisted by a wealthy northerner who recognized her potential, she began attending\u00a0Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The unusual idea of a southern woman attending a northern school was shocking to those who knew the Hatcher family, according to Women Who Changed Things <\/em>by\u00a0Linda S. Peavy and Ursula Smith:<\/p>\n The proposal\u00a0created shock waves in the community and it is said that one Richmond\u00a0resident told Dr. Hatcher he would rather see his daughter in hell than at a\u00a0Yankee college. Supposedly, Dr. Hatcher replied, “Well, you send yours to\u00a0hell but mine is going to Vassar!”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n After a struggle to catch up with the more advanced northern courses, Miss\u00a0Hatcher\u00a0received an A.B. degree at Vassar in\u00a01888. She taught at the Richmond Female Institute for a year before going on to earn\u00a0a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Chicago in 1903.<\/p>\n The next move\u00a0in Orie Hatcher’s academic\u00a0career was to\u00a0Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania) College\u00a0where she worked as a reader in English, and\u00a0by 1912\u00a0an associate professor of comparative and Elizabethan literature. There she began<\/span>\u00a0establishing and organizing education-related projects, such as the founding of the Department of Comparative Literature and organizing the Virginia Association of Colleges and Schools for Girls, a group that encouraged\u00a0individual girls’ schools to cooperate in forming higher educational standards for girls and improving their educational opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1914, Miss Hatcher\u00a0decided to move from the field of\u00a0literary scholarship\u00a0and into\u00a0projects that focused on women\u2019s education. She was the first president of the\u00a0Virginia Bureau of Vocations for Women in Richmond and helped found the Richmond School of Social Work and Public Health to provide\u00a0professional training for\u00a0women in\u00a0areas that were socially acceptable\u00a0at the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Virginia Bureau of Vocations for Women was changed to Southern Women\u2019s Educational Alliance in 1921, then sixteen years later to the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth. As the name changes suggest, the organization, under Hatcher’s\u00a0devoted leadership, had shifted away from its early focus on increasing vocational opportunities for educated southern women and rural high school girls to its later activities in vocational guidance for rural youth and working with educational organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n To publicize the work of the Alliance, the organization often used radio broadcasts, including students interviewing Hatcher and a dialogue in 1938 between Hatcher and Eleanor Roosevelt on the future of rural youth.<\/p>\n Hatcher\u2019s interests had evolved along with the organization that she managed until her death. <\/span>She chaired committees on rural youth in many of the educational groups that were associated with the Alliance. <\/span>She wrote a number of\u00a0books on the subject, including\u00a0\u201cA Mountain School\u201d and \u201cGuiding Rural Boys and Girls.\u201d In 1932 the White House Conference of Child Health and Protection published a volume that included Hatcher\u2019s views on vocational guidance for rural youth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was in 1935 that Hatcher\u2019s attention turned to the Youth Guidance Institute begun by Glyn Morris at Pine Mountain Settlement School. In\u00a0<\/span>Glyn <\/a>Morris\u2019s 1941 report to the PMSS Board of Trustees<\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0summarized\u00a0his ten\u00a0years as director of the School, he\u00a0<\/span>named Dr. Orie Latham Hatcher (on\u00a0pages 13-14) as having helped the School prepare for changes that would be brought by World War II.<\/span><\/p>\n [In addition to student community service]…another growth in our extension services…is the Pine Mountain Youth Guidance Institute<\/em>…. Agencies of many kinds are at work on youth problems, but unless they work together, unless they have common aims, their energy is dissipated.\u00a0The Guidance Institute offers one means for bringing these agencies together….<\/em><\/p>\n …The Institute had its small beginnings in August 1935 when it was limited to members of the Pine Mountain Settlement School staff. At that time we met together with Dr. Latham Hatcher, President of the Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth, to plan ways whereby our own School resources might be brought more in line with the guidance point of view….<\/em><\/p>\n Dr. Hatcher’s efforts to broaden opportunities for women and rural youth are felt to this day by the thousands of individuals whose futures were brightened by her life’s work.<\/p>\n Orie Latham Hatcher was born in Petersburg, Virginia, on December 10, 1868, to William Eldridge Hatcher and Oranie Virginia \u201cJennie\u201d (Snead) Hatcher. She was the third child of nine children, four of whom died in infancy. Hatcher died at age 77 of pneumonia after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage on April 1, 1946. She was buried in a family plot at Richmond\u2019s Hollywood Cemetery in Virginia.<\/span><\/p>\n SEE t<\/strong>he recently (2020) completed biographical information provided by the Virginia Commonwealth University on Orie Latham Hatcher <\/a>and her contributions to the Social Welfare History Project Richmond School of Social Economy \u2013 Beginnings. October 1916 \u2013 July 1917.<\/a><\/p>\n
\nORIE LATHAM HATCHER: Her Education<\/h3>\n
ORIE LATHAM HATCHER: Women’s Education<\/h3>\n
ORIE LATHAM HATCHER: Alliance for Guidance of Rural Youth<\/strong><\/h3>\n
ORIE LATHAM HATCHER: PMSS Rural Youth Guidance Institute<\/h3>\n
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