Manet Harrison Fowler (1895-1976) was an African American singer, musician, and educator from Fort Worth, Texas. She graduated from the Tuskegee Institute in 1913 and studied at the Chicago College of Music. She co-founded the Texas Association of Negro Musicians and in 1928 founded the Mwalimu School in Texas, later relocating it to Harlem. The school was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, providing educational opportunities in the arts for Harlem's residents. Under the direction of Fowler, the Mwalimu School choir regularly performed and recorded. Fowler was also a painter whose style incorporated religious and civil rights themes.

Manet Helen Fowler (born 1918) was the eldest daughter of Manet Harrison Fowler and Stephen H. Fowler. In 1952, she became the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from a university in the United States.

The Manet Harrison Fowler Collection is comprised of correspondence, writings, photographs, and printed ephemera documenting the career and personal life of Manet Harrison Fowler, and in particular her connection with the Tuskegee Institute. The collection includes photographs, programs, and correspondence documenting Fowler's activities as a Tuskegee Institute alumna; she attended reunions for the Class of 1913 in 1923, 1953, and 1963. Draft, typescript, signed, of Fowler's remarks introducing Fred S. A. Johnson at the 1963 reunion is in the collection. The collection contains correspondence and printed ephemera relating to the Tuskegee Institute dating from 1923 to 1975. Fowler's participation in the Annual Convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians (1957) can be seen in photographs pasted on scrapbook leaves and annotated by Fowler. Scrapbook pages with photographs and autograph manuscript annotations document Fowler's trip to Los Angeles in September 1959; as the documents show she attended a musical recital organized by her friend Irene Richburg Jones, which included a performance by Booker T. Washington's great grandchildren (children of Gloria Washington Jackson).

The collection also contains correspondence between Manet Helen Fowler and Ernest E. Neal, Director of the Rural Life Council, Tuskegee Institute, regarding Dr. Fowler's work as a cultural anthropologist on "A Study of Health Practices in Southern Rural Communities and How They May Be Improved Through Education" (1952-1953). Fowler's expense reports from her work in Alabama for the study are filed with the correspondence. In their letters Fowler and Neal discuss the study and Fowler's proposed changes to the Tuskegee Institute's "Negro Yearbook."

African Americans > Alabama > Social conditions.

African Americans > Music.

Alabama > Social life and customs > 20th century.

Photographs - United States - 20th century.

Photographic prints - United States - 20th century.

Anthropologists.

Music teachers.

Musicians.