thumb|Undated map of Storer College campus, facing east towards the train station. Does not include [[Henry Lockwood House|Lockwood House, which is off the map toward the train station, on Fillmore Street.]]
thumb|Advertisement for Storer College, 1910
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, United States, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put it,
According to an article in the Journal of Negro Education:
History
Founding
Storer began in 1865 as a one-room elementary school, sponsored by New England Free Baptists and the Freedmen's Bureau. Its first class was 19 formerly enslaved children, described as "poorly clad, ill-kept, and undisciplined", who desperately needed the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
At a conference in 2015 honoring the 150th anniversary of Storer College, John Cuthbert, head of the West Virginia & Regional History Center, observed:
Once slavery was ended in the United States and the education of blacks was no longer prohibited, there was a "wild rush for the schools". a philanthropist from Maine, led to the charter of "a school which might eventually become a College, to be in located in one of the Southern States, at which youth could be educated without distinction of race or color". Though called a college from the beginning, it was a normal school until into the twentieth century, providing high school-level instruction to future primary school teachers. It also is not "historically black" in the usual sense. The student body was overwhelmingly black, and in the 1910 advertisement reproduced at right it describes itself as "for Colored students", but there were some white students. It was also ahead of its time in that it accepted both male and female students, which then was unusual.
The Free Baptists called Storer their greatest success. The U.S. Congress turned over to it four buildings that had been used for housing at the former Harpers Ferry National Armory. The school gradually expanded its offerings, adding a traditional or "collegiate" high school, an industrial division, then junior college classes, and finally four-year programs. The College built additional buildings. Until 1891, when the state West Virginia Colored Institute opened, it was the only college in West Virginia that accepted non-white students.
Choice of Harpers Ferry
In 1865, as a representative of New England's Freewill Baptist Home Mission Society, charged with coordinating their instructional efforts in the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding areas, Reverend Nathan Cook Brackett chose centrally located Harpers Ferry as his base. The Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, on low ground adjoining the rail line and the Potomac, was destroyed during the Civil War and was never rebuilt, and the lower town was in poor condition. However, a sturdy and almost vacant building on higher ground was available; it was known as Lockwood House for a Union general who had stayed there briefly. Brackett installed his family.
Under him were four different schools, in different communities. One was conducted by him and his family in Lockwood House, which was to become Storer College's first building. They taught reading, writing, and arithmetic to the children of former slaves and sometimes to their parents. Parents and children sometimes took the same class together, "but the rising generation so far outstripped their ancestors that the old folks became ashamed of themselves, and gave it up." though the phrase "without distinction of race or color" was fiercely debated. At the same time the institution was authorized to operate as a normal school, training teachers for the "colored schools".
The College was dedicated on December 22, 1869.
"College" of Storer College
When founded and for most of its existence, Storer did not offer what in the 21st century would be deemed a college education or college credits. Numerous other colleges, such as Tougaloo College, New-York Central College, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Oberlin College, also offered instruction at a pre-college level. They were running in essence college-preparatory schools; in the 19th century, in many areas there were no schools preparing students for college. Even in the 20th century, most "junior colleges for Negroes" delivered primarily high-school-level instruction. No one else in West Virginia was educating those students until the foundation in 1891 of the West Virginia Colored Institute, today West Virginia State University, and in 1895 of the Bluefield Colored Institute, today Bluefield State University. (They are in 2021 the universities in West Virginia with the lowest black enrollment.) They certainly were not welcome at the segregated state normal school, Shepherd College, founded in 1871 in nearby Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
In 1938 Storer began offering a curriculum that would lead to a four-year college degree.
In 1881 the Legislature directed that the state finance the education of 17 prospective "colored" teachers, justifying this number as being equivalent, relative to West Virginia's colored population at the time, to the ratio of white prospective teachers supported by the state compared to its white population.
Finances of the college
The school charged only minimal tuition, $3 per quarter, or $20 for five years. Rooms were only $3 per quarter, so the students' main expense was for their board, estimated at $2–$3 per week.
Support of the College was the largest single endeavor of the Free Baptists, to which they were "thoroughly committed". The town of Harpers Ferry had already rejected a proposal to use Lockwood House "for a school for colored children".
thumb|left|Soldier's Gate, Storer College
Residents of Harpers Ferry tried everything from slander and vandalism to pulling political strings in their efforts to shut down the school. They petitioned the Legislature to have Storer's charter revoked. At one point lady teachers required a military escort. They were quite unhappy at its return and then move to the Storer campus.
In 1944 Storer's first black president, Richard Ishmael McKinney, was welcomed with a burning cross on his lawn. Students were taught that they should efface themselves. The school had at one point a Modern Minstrel Company, which performed "Plantation Songs and Melodies" and renditions of numbers like "If the Man in the Moon Was a Coon". W.E.B. Du Bois had prepared a new plaque in response to the Hayward Shepherd monument, but McDonald, backed by the trustees, refused to allow the NAACP to place this plaque on a wall of the Fort.
The plaque was not erected until 2006. Rather than attaching it to the Fort at its present location, as originally planned, by request from the black community the Park Service located it on the former Storer campus, at the Fort's former location. In the summer, Storer rented dormitory rooms to tourists and summer boarders, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran excursion trains from Baltimore and Washington.
Frederick Douglass's speech, 1881
Storer College was a site of various important events in West Virginia and national African-American history. delivered his famous speech on abolitionist John Brown at Storer College. His intent was to raise funds for an endowed John Brown professorship, (It never materialized.) There was a "large gathering of people" from Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and some from as far as New England. They attended a ceremonial laying of the cornerstone for Anthony Hall.
<!--====Free Baptists General Conferences, 1882, 1889, and 1901====
The Free Baptists, who had founded Storer College, held their 1882, 1889, and 1901 triennial General Conferences at the College. Attendance at the 1889 meeting, including locals, was 500. In 1901 the business sessions were held in the chapel of Andrews Hall, the evening sessions in the Baptist Church.-->
National League of Colored Women visit, 1896
In July 1896, the first national convention of the National League of Colored Women, meeting in Washington, D.C., visited Harpers Ferry, the John Brown Fort, and the college.
Niagara Movement conference, 1906
left|thumb|Niagara Movement leaders [[W. E. B. Du Bois (seated), and (left to right) J. R. Clifford, L. M. Hershaw, and F. H. M. Murray at Storer College in 1906.]]
The Niagara Movement, predecessor of the NAACP, is closely linked to Storer. Formed by a group of leading African-American intellectuals, the Niagara Movement planned a campaign to eliminate discrimination based on race. The movement's leader, W. E. B. Du Bois, a sociologist with a PhD, rejected the prevalent theory of "accommodation", as opposed to social equality, promoted by Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Institute.
The program for its first meeting, celebrated in Fort Erie, Ontario, for fear of disruptions in Buffalo, New York, was typed on the back of Storer letterhead.
The Movement's second conference, the first in the U.S., was held at Storer in 1906. Attendees walked to John Brown's Fort, which shortly thereafter was moved to the campus.
The 1907 meeting would also have been held at Storer, but the school's white administrators would not permit it, because of pressures placed on them.
The Niagara Movement published an annual "Address to the World", demanding voting rights (the mass of African Americans in the South had been essentially disenfranchised by the turn of the century), educational and economic opportunities, justice in the courts, and recognition in unions and the military. Many conservative African-American and white leaders became alienated by their approach, which eroded potential political support. During the 1906 conference, Storer staff expressed discomfort with the group's militancy, and dismay at their tendency to consider even progressive whites as the enemy.
By 1910, five years after it was formed, the Niagara Movement was dissolved. While it did not produce material gains in the civil rights arena, its leaders had announced their intention to pursue full civil rights, thereby laying a valuable foundation for the development of a more broad-based push for equality.
thumb|Poster announcing John Brown's Fort
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in New York City in 1910 with an interracial board, and many of the members of the failing Niagara Movement quickly joined it. The NAACP had many of the same goals of the Niagara Movement; it also pursued a concentrated program of litigation campaigns in the effort to overturn of barriers to voter registration and voting, end state and local jurisdictions' segregation of housing, gain integrated public transportation and other facilities, seek integrated public education, achieve fair jury trials for blacks, and similar goals.
John Brown's Fort, 1909
John Brown's Fort, the firehouse at the former Harpers Ferry Armory, was moved to the Storer campus in 1909, where it housed the college museum. In 1968, after closure of the college and establishment of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, the National Park Service moved it back to as close to its original location as possible at the time.
Four-year college degrees
In 1938, under the leadership of school president Henry T. McDonald, Storer became a four-year college. The last new building was completed in 1939-1940. Enrollment peaked at around 400, as Storer and other colleges had struggled during the privations of the Great Depression. The number of students dipped lower with the high rate of participation by young men in World War II. The college had received some financial support from the state of West Virginia, as it helped educate blacks, who were limited to segregated schools and colleges.
Although the school granted four-year degrees, it never received regional accreditation; it never applied. As a result, it was forced to turn away some students. Those who wanted to be doctors, for example, were not admitted. The college was unable to fund the laboratories and other scientific equipment necessary for a pre-med degree.
Closure of the college
It is commonly said that Storer closed because state funding ended after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling found segregated public schools to be unconstitutional. There is a kernel of truth to it, but it was but the last of a long series of financial problems. In the first place, Storer College charged no tuition. Its main funding came from the Freewill Baptists. The state of West Virginia helped off and on, but refused to fully fund Storer, or turn it into a state college, because it was religiously affiliated, and because the Constitution of West Virginia prohibited the joint study of black and white students in publicly supported schools. Storer was a New England project, or a black project, but it was not a West Virginia project. From a West Virginian point of view, Storer's remote location was terrible. The College Trustees chose to retain the religious affiliation and to keep the school open to all. State money then went to fund the new West Virginia Colored Institute (1891) and Bluefield Colored Institute (1895), which were more centrally located and served students that might have attended Storer.
Providing four-year college educations was much more expensive than training primary school teachers. In fact it was beyond the resources of the Freewill Baptists, whose support for the college depended on such things as children's Sunday School contributions.
Storer had been accumulating debt for a decade, and could not survive without the state appropriation. In June 1955, Storer College closed its doors forever.
Education at Storer
thumb|right|Anthony Hall on the former Storer campus
Understanding that former slaves needed to learn more than the three Rs to function in society, Storer founders intended to provide more than a basic education. According to the first college catalog, students were to "receive counsel and sympathy, learn what constitutes correct living, and become qualified for the performance of the great work of life." In its early years, in the press to expand literacy among the freedmen and their children, Storer taught freedmen to read, write, spell, do sums, and to go back into their communities to teach others these lessons.
Storer believed that "morality" went hand in hand with education; for admission, students had to "give satisfactory evidence of a good moral character."
In 1871 the faculty was the following:
- N. C. Brackett, Principal (arithmetic, philosophy, and political economy)
- A. H. Morrell (Bible history and vocal music)
- Lura E. Brackett, Preceptress (English grammar, algebra, and botany) (sister of N. C. Brackett)
- Louise Wood Brackett (Latin and drawing) (wife of N. C. Brackett)
- Lizzie Morell (instrumental music)
Plus various substitutes, assistants, and a matron. Hatter left in 1896 to become the first principal of Bluefield Colored Institute. He was a trustee of Storer from 1891 until 1906.
The Bracketts' daughters, Mary Brackett Robertson and Celeste Brackett Newcomer, both taught at the school.
In 1899, the President, the first to be given that title, At that time there were 7 full-time and 4 part-time teachers, no courses beyond the high school level, an outdated library, inadequate science labs and equipment, and buildings in desperate need of essential repairs.
In 1917, the College, "now industrial and normal in character", had about 150 students, and "the faculty is entirely white."
In 1931-32, of the 11 faculty members reported, 5 had a master's degree, and 6 a bachelor's degree.
Richard I. McKinney became Storer's first African-American president in 1944, with the goal of making Storer "a noteworthy four-year institution". He was the College's first employee with a Ph.D. (from Yale). The community welcomed him with a burning cross on his front lawn. Under him, Storer hired additional black faculty; some white faculty had a problem with this. Tensions became worse because McKinney worked to strengthen the College's ties to Africa, including inviting alumnus Nnamdi Azikiwe, President of Nigeria, as commencement speaker in 1947. Financial solvency was not achieved, and there were tensions with the paternalistic white Board of Directors. McKinney tendered his resignation in 1949, but it was not accepted until the following year, when "the board was...eager to rid Storer of McKinney".
The first 8 graduates of the Storer Normal School graduated in 1872. In 1874, a writer observed that the demand for these "colored teachers...is far beyond the capacity of the college with its present means and endowments to supply."
In 1871 there were 203 enrollees. Counting those still students, Academic Department, 42 students; Normal Department, 174 students; Preparatory Division, 101 students. As of that date there had been 285 different students enrolled.
In 1931 there were 130 students, 52 at the junior college level and 78 at the high school level. As of the later 19th century students came from 14 states and 4 foreign countries.
Original buildings
Buildings still standing in 2022 are marked in bold.
- Four Armory buildings. With the support of Senator and future President James Garfield, who had studied in a Free Will Baptist school, in 1869 Congress turned over to the War Department, who turned over to the Freedmen's Bureau, and then to Storer, four surviving buildings at Camp Hill, all built by the federal government as housing for Armory employees. They were "dilapidated" after Civil War damage. who lived there only three months. Nathan Brackett set up his first school in 1865, he personally teaching a roomful of illiterate freedmen to read. There was a hole in the roof from a shell and windows missing, In 1882, a visitor noted that in the chapel, behind the pulpit, a large portrait of John Brown held the "place of honor", accompanied by portraits of abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, and "General Garfield". It was rehabilitated by the NPS in 1963, and houses the Mather Training Center.
- Lincoln Hall, the boys' dormitory, was a frame building built in 1870–71. It contained 34 double rooms on 3 stories. In the summer rooms were rented to tourists and boarders, to raise money.
- John Brown's Fort, "an important symbol of the struggle African Americans had faced to win their freedom", was moved to the campus in 1909, the 50th anniversary of John Brown's raid, and remained there through the College's closure in 1955. It contained the College museum, with display cases, and pictures of Brown, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Kate Field (who got it returned to Harpers Ferry, from Chicago). In 1968 the National Park Service moved it to its present location in lower Harpers Ferry.
- The Science Building, built 1947, and the DeWolf Industrial Building were also razed by the NPS.
Since 1964, Virginia Union University has considered, and treats, graduates of the college as alumni of VUU. VUU's L. Douglas Wilder Library and Learning Resource Center holds Storer College's former library collection and some of the college's records. Other Storer College records are held at the library of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, West Virginia University's West Virginia and Regional History Center, and at Howard University's Moorland–Spingarn Research Center.
The campus of the college is now maintained as a part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Since 1963, the three remaining college structures now house the National Park Service's Stephen T. Mather Training Center and the Service's library. The Training Center is one of four major training centers operated by and for the National Park Service. It is named for the Service's first Director, Stephen Mather. The college buildings were completely remodeled.
Each August, the alumni of Storer College gather in Harpers Ferry for an annual reunion. At last count fewer than 70 alumni survive.
Archival material
The archives of Storer College are located at the WVU Libraries, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia. "The West Virginia and Regional History Center holds five archives and manuscripts collections that exclusively contain Storer College materials." Howard University has a small collection of Storer material. The National Park Service library and archive in Harpers Ferry has many items, and the Jefferson County Museum, in Charles Town, has a permanent exhibit, "The Founding of Storer College".