 Storer College postcard (1940)[1] | |
Former names | Storer Normal School |
|---|---|
| Active | 1867 – 1955 |
| Location | , , 39°19′25.64″N 77°44′7.49″W / 39.3237889°N 77.7354139°W |
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, 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,[2] it was a unique institution whose focus changed several times. There is no one category of college into which it fits neatly. Sometimes white students studied alongside Black students, which at the time was prohibited by law at state-regulated schools in West Virginia and the other Southern states.
In the early twentieth century, Storer was at the center of the growing protest movement against Jim Crow treatment that would lead to the NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement. The first American meeting of the predecessor of the NAACP, the Niagara Movement, was held at Storer in 1906.
John Brown's Fort, a symbol of the end of slavery in the United States, was located from 1909 until 1968 on the Storer campus, where it was once used as the college museum (the "fort" has since been moved back to the lower town). Although the college closed in 1955, much of the Storer campus is now preserved as part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
- ^ HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY ADDENDUM TO STORER COLLEGE, COOK HALL (Permelia Eastman Cook Hall), p. 3. Note: Permelia Eastman Cook Hall was not constructed until 1939-1940. Archived 2017-02-25 at the Wayback Machine, HABS Survey, Library of Congress
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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