CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION - Virginia Tech

requirements before they would invest in any educational venue.11 Storer College wasitself identified with such a philanthropist, John Storer, a Congregationalist from Sanford,Maine, who owned numerous stores throughout that state and had made several profitableinvestments.12 Dedicated to the goal of education, Storer pledged 10,000 to ReverendOren Burbank Cheney to institute a school in the south for freedmen, and Storerproceeded to enter into a two-party contract with the Baptists leading to the formation ofStorer. That contract included five clauses: (a) Storer’s pledge was contingent upon acorresponding investment by the Free Will Baptists; (b) the sum was to be entrusted to aninvestment-third party for municipal bonds until the original pledge yielded 40,000; (c)the corresponding Baptist investment was to be raised on or before January 1, 1868; (d)the institution should bear the name of its greatest benefactor; and (e) the original pledge,in the event of premature death, was to automatically revert to the estate of John Storer.13When Storer died, on October 23, 1867, and his heirs exercised hereditary privilege overhis real property and liquid assets, the Free Will Baptists initially feared their endeavorshad been undertaken in vain; however, Storer’s children eventually were convinced thattheir father’s endowment should be fulfilled. They emulated his philanthropic model and11John Hope Franklin Jr. and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,Inc., 1988), 242.12Edwin Emery, "John Storer," in The History of Sanford, Maine, 1661-1900, ed. William Morrell Emery(Fall River, Massachusetts: Published by the Compiler, 1901), 507-508; John Storer,jstorer@ezonline.com, Telephone Conversation, John Storer, Great-Grandfather (July 31, 2002).13James Calder, Dover, NH, Free Will Baptist Correspondence, to N. C. Brackett, January 30, 1868, WestVirginia Collection, Wise Library, West Virginia University: A & M 1322. James Calder was involved inthe establishment of Storer College; and, later, James Calder was to become the President at PennsylvaniaState College (now Penn State University). In this denominational correspondence, Calder relates hisconcern for the terms of contract to Brackett regarding Senator Fessenden’s position as third-party investorto the Storer estate; Burgess and Ward, "Free Baptist Cyclopaedia: Historical and Biographical;" See: “TheMorning Star,” (Dover, NH: February 27, 1867); Emeline Burlingame-Cheney, The Story of the Life andWork of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College ( Boston, MA: Morning StarPublishing House, 1907).6

relinquished their legal claim to his 10,000 pledge to the Baptists. Later, they evendonated an additional 1,000 to be used for establishing the school’s first library.14The Lockwood House, one of four buildings acquired by the foundingdenomination, was the first physical structure to accommodate the school under thebenefactor’s name, Storer College.15 The abandoned house, which provided temporaryaccommodations for the Baptists by ordinance of the reorganized government in 1865,formerly housed both Union and Confederate officers before and during the Civil War, asHarper’s Ferry passed from Union to Confederate hands and vice versa.16 Officialacquisition of these buildings was granted, by an Act of Congress, through the WarDepartment’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, the federalauthorization of which included the requisition and resale of abandoned properties, thesupervision of freedmen activities, and provision for humanitarian aids and services.1714"Storer College," The Morning Star (Dover, NH), August 26, 1867; Emeline Burlingame-Cheney, TheStory of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College (Boston, MA:Morning Star Publishing House, 1907); "Death of A Good Man," The Morning Star (Dover, NewHampshire), 6 November 1867, XLII, Notices, Appointments, Etc.: 147.15Kate J. Anthony, Storer College Collection, Box 16, FF7, 1891, Brief Historical Sketch: Storer College,Harper's Ferry National Historic Park, Boston, MA: Morning Star Publishing House; James M. Brewster,Morning Star Office; Dover, NH, Free Will Baptist Correspondence, to N. C. Brackett, February 7, 1868,West Virginia Collection, Wise Library, West Virginia University: A & M 1322; Thomas A. Moore Clerkof County Court, Deed Book H, 579-81, Bargain and Sale, 14 March, 1882, File: Deed, United States toN.C. Brackett, Charles Town, WV, Jefferson County Court House, Clerk of the Circuit Court; Sarah JaneFoster, Sarah Jane Foster, Teacher of the Freedmen: A Diary and Letters, FWB Mission Teacher,Manuscript Diary, ed. Wayne E. Reilly (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 32; AnneDudley, "Anniversaries: Home Mission Society." Special edition. The Morning Star (Dover, NH),Wednesday, 23 October 1867, 1-2.16Kate J. Anthony, Storer College Collection, Box 16, FF7, 1891, Brief Historical Sketch: Storer College,Harper's Ferry National Historic Park, Boston, MA: Morning Star Publishing House.17James M. McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); JamesStealey, III, "Reports of Freedmen's Bureau Operation in West Virginia: Agents in the Eastern Panhandle,"West Virginia History 42, no. Fall/Winter (1980): 94-129. "Although Bureau activities encompassed otherareas of the Thirty-Fifth State during subsequent months, especially the Great Kanawha Valley, mostagency effort centered in Jefferson and Berkeley counties until the Bureau's removal in October 1868" (94);Report of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Abandoned Lands, and Freedmen, A HouseExecutive Document No. 11, 39th Congress, 1st Session, 1865; Also see: Annual Report of the AssistantCommissioner, for the District of Columbia and West Virginia for the Year Ending October 22, 1867.7

In 1867, Storer College was thus founded and granted a charter by the WestVirginia Legislature as “an institution of learning for the education of youth, withoutdistinction of race or color,” although the qualifying phrase “without distinction of raceor color” was fiercely debated between the two legislative houses.18 Those in favor ofthe school’s charter likely believed that educational development was essential for thestate’s entire population, beneficial for all including the state’s minority populations,since Storer College was granted its charter as a state-approved normal department thesame year as that of the West Virginia State Normal Department established at MarshallCollege in Huntington, WV in Cabell County.19 In opposition to the school’s charterwere resistant pockets of Confederation loyalists, who were having difficulty assimilatingto post-war social reforms that now hoped to reconstruct the state in such a way thathostile factions would quell under the state’s attempt to comply with national efforts toestablish wide-scale peace.20 Despite oppositionist debate due to lingering Confederatesentiment, Storer College eventually became West Virginia’s first higher educationfacility, as well as the first to offer a State Normal Department, for Negroes, and itremained so for the next twenty-five years, until the Second Morrill Act (1890) led to theestablishment of the West Virginia Colored Institute just outside of Charleston, WV inKanawha County.2118Storer College Catalogue Collection, 1869, Harper's Ferry National Historic Park, WV, Libby & Co.,Printers--Enquirer Office: Dover, NH. 1. See: West Virginia Congress, West Virginia History & StateArchives, Sixth Session: Chapter 117, 106-107, March 3, 1868, An Act to Incorporate, Wheeling, WV:John Frew, Public Printer.19Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia, , Page 148th Cong., Fifth Session sess., at 148 (February 27,1867); Charles H. Ambler, A History of Education in West Virginia (Huntington, WV: Standard Printing &Publishing Company, 1951), 170; Robert Chase Toole, "Part II: A History of Marshall Academy, 18501886," West Virginia History Journal 14, no. 1 (October 1952): 44.20Ambler, From Early Colonial Times to 1949, 169, 246.21Storer College Catalogue Collection, 1869, Harper's Ferry National Historic Park, WV, Libby & Co.,Printers--Enquirer Office: Dover, NH; Carter G. Woodson, "Studies in Social Science: Early NegroEducation in West Virginia," ed. Carter G. Woodson, Special Issue of, 3 (Institute, West Virginia: The8

The legislature’s vote for the institution’s charter, however, was remanded forvote until the spring session of the following year. Thus, although the institution hadbeen in full operation under its legal name since 1867, the charter’s passage is thus datedMarch 3, 1868.22 From what initially began as a mission school evolved, a four-yearcollege.23 The first four-year class graduated in 1936 and, as previously mentioned,Storer College continued operation until 1955, when it finally closed its doors, to beofficially taken over five years later by the federal government in 1960.24Storer College in the Context of the Negro College Movement in Post-Civil War AmericaTo be fully understood and appreciated, the history of Storer College must be viewedagainst a larger post-war context in which numerous, varied schools were organized onbehalf of emancipated slaves: known as freed men after the war. Collectively, theseschools comprised the Negro College Movement, a post-war response to destruction,deprivation, confusion, and emancipation.25 Caliver suggests that this period ofAmerican history, which details the struggles of an oppressed population to become aneducated citizenship, offers a wealth of knowledge concerning American educationalWest Virginia Collegiate Institute, December 1921), 1-55. After the Second Morrill Act of 1890, whichprovided higher education for Negroes, West Virginia Colored Institute was established, in 1891, inCharleston, WV; and, subsequently, Bluefield Colored Institute was founded in 1895.22West Virginia. Congress, West Virginia History & State Archives, Sixth Session: Chapter 117, 106 107, 3 March, 1868, An Act to Incorporate, Charleston, WV, Wheeling, WV: John Frew, Public Printer.23David Cole, Personal Communication. RE: Accreditation (July 30 2002). David Cole is the historian for,and maintains the private collections of the Storer College National Alumni Association in Washington,D.C. Mr. Cole is also the Storer College National Alumni Executive Board of Directors, Chairperson.Cole is a member of Storer’s 1950 graduating class.24United States Congress, , Public Law 655 (1960)W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Freedmen's Bureau," Atlantic Monthly 88 (march 1901): 354-65; D.O.W Holmes,"Curriculum Offerings in Negro Colleges Contributing to Functional Citizenship," Quarterly Review of HigherEducation Among Negroes 4 (January 1936): 12, 1-9; D.O.W. Holmes, The Evolution of the Negro College (NY: AMSPress, 1970), 1-15, 163-78; Kelly Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," Journal of NegroEducation 2, no. 3 (July 1933): 411-12, 411-22; Kelly Miller, "Forty Years of Negro Education," Educational ReviewXXXVI (Dec. 1908): 484-98, 484-98; Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History, 5 (Washington, D.C.: TheAssociated Publishers, Inc., 1928); Ullin Whitney Leavell, Philanthropy in Negro Education (Westport, CN: NegroUniversities Press, 1930); Henry Allen Bullock, A History of Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present25(NY: Praeger Publishers, 1970).9

opportunity.26 Further, Franklin and Moss claim this movement formed the impetus fordecisive social change in post-Civil War America since from the earliest days Lincolnsupported education as an essential criterion for citizenship.27 Thus, an understandingfor the evolution of colleges founded during the Negro College Movement is mandatoryfor those seeking to fully comprehend the impact of the American creed, the humanitythat stands behind the American citizenship, and the struggle of marginalizedpopulation’s within the context of both to become educated citizens.A Focus for Resourceful ScholarshipMany scholars have investigated the Negro College Movement and its developmentalperiod from fixed historical chronologies directly relevant to the time periods of theinvestigations. A few representative accounts–depicting a historical cross-section, sinceas Anthony Brundage states, “[d]iligent historians assemble as many such accounts asthey can”—are those by Woodson, Miller, Holmes, Klein, and Bowles & DeCosta.28Discussing Negro education, Woodson separated the movement into threedistinct periods: (a) the “Pre-Emancipationist Period” (before 1863), during which arestricted number of benevolent whites assumed legal risks to educate their own slavechattels; (b) the “Year of Emancipation Period” (1863), which witnessed a mountingnumber of benevolent whites willingly and knowingly undertaking unlawful actions to26United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, by Ambrose Caliver, National Survey ofthe Education of Teachers, Vol. IV, Bulletin no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1933)27John Hope Franklin and Jr. and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom (New York, NY: McGrawHill, Inc., 1988), 162, 205.28Anthony Brundage, Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing (Wheeling, IL:Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1997), 19.10

educate Negroes; and (c) the “Post-Emancipationist Period” that offered educationdesigned by military personnel and missionary teachers.29Kelly Miller, who taught mathematics and introduced sociology into thecurriculum at Howard University, studied the college movement as two unilateral periodsof development. Miller’s first period begins with the inception of the Negro college atthe close of the American Civil War and ends with the beginning of World War I.30According to Miller, this period was characterized by the involvement of Northernphilanthropists whose “chief aim was to make them [Negroes] pious and serviceable totheir race and country.” 31 The second period begins with the conclusion of World War Iand ends in 1933. Miller claims, “In the fullness of time the fathers and founders [italicsadded] passed on from labor to reward [because they had died] . They were succeededby a newer type of philanthropists [sic] who, themselves, had not been baptized in thespirit and fire of war.” 32 Miller’s claim differentiates the genuine act of conscience, asdemonstrated by the “fathers and founders,” from the “newer type of philanthropists[sic]” act of contribution. Further, according to Miller, “the Negro college becamewavering and uncertain,” because it was simultaneously influenced by a biased publicreaction from the social majority (whites) that resulted when the administrative control ofthese institutions were transferred to the social minority (blacks).33Holmes argued that the Negro College Movement experienced four fixedchronological periods. The first period, 1860 – 1885, was exemplified by military,benevolent, and federal intervention. Decreasing societal confusion, economic and29Woodson, "Studies in Social Science: Early Negro Education in West Virginia," 7-10.Kelly Miller, "The Past, Present and Future of the Negro College," Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3(July 1933): 411-22.31Ibid., 413.32Ibid. 413.33Ibid. 414.3011

political instability, and the cumulative effects of poverty characterized the period. Asecond period, 1886 – 1916, involved decreased funding yet improved organizationalstructures. At this time, a second influx of Northern teachers helped to re-shapeadvancing curricula above secondary levels. During this period, most colleges werefashioned after traditional seminaries, classical academies, and advanced institutions inwhich white, northern teachers had been trained.34 The third period identified byHolmes’ investigation is marked by the publication of a federal study in 1917 by ThomasJesse Jones. The Jones study, Negro Education: A Study of the Private and HigherSchools for Colored People in the United States, was published in two volumes.35 Afterthis study, a new-found orientation—based on need, accomplishment, andadvancement—was created by the various philanthropic agents who financed educationfor the institutions that were making routine appeals to them for financial support. Thefederal exploration proved to be beneficial for both agents and institutions. Philanthropicagents began to systematically approach educational problems, while colleges developeda sense of educational self-censure, as they began to evaluate their own marked progressor the lack thereof.36Holmes’ final period, 1928 – 1934, corresponds with another federalinvestigation, conducted by Arthur Klein, in 1928, when education turned toward34Holmes, The Evolution of the Negro College, 205-06.United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, by Thomas Jesse Jones, NegroEducation: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States., Vol. I,Bulletin no. 38 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1917); United StatesDepartment of the Interior, Bureau of Education, by Thomas Jesse Jones, Negro Education: A Study of thePrivate and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States., Vol. II, Bulletin no. 39 (Washington,D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1917).36Bullock, A History of Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present; Jones, Negro Education: AStudy of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States., Vol. II, Bulletin no. 393512

scientific measurement.37 As opposed to previous investigations, which had notsystematically processed earlier data collections, Klein’s approach proved closer to truescientific application. At the request of organizational and federal representatives, Kleinconducted a methodical survey, involving in many instances on-site research teams, ofthose states that had established higher education institutions. Holmes suggests that thefinal period for his investigation is based on the Klein survey, which “definitely markedthe beginning of a new era” for the Negro College Movement.38 This period is definedby an increasingly definitive methodological direction that corresponds with escalatingaccreditation standards in these institutions.Frank Bowles and Frank A. DeCosta divided the Negro College Movement intofour periods: (a) Pre-Civil War; (b) Civil War to 1895; (c) 1896 – 1953; and (d) 1954 –1971. The first period is characterized by “apprenticeship training, nondegree [sic]courses, training for teachers, training abroad, training in higher institutions and selfeducation.” 39 Although the period 1865 – 1895 marks the emergence of numeroushigher educational facilities, to label such institutions colleges and universities wasdeceiving, for during their formative years they provided little more than elementary andsecondary education. Most philanthropic investors during the period commissionedmissionaries and ecclesiastical fathers to work directly with these underprivilegedpopulations through a multitude of relief efforts. The third period, 1896 – 1953, isdescribed by Bowles and DeCosta as the period during which southern institutionsachieved greater autonomy prompted by a separate system of education in the south. As37United States Department of Interior, Bureau of Education, by Arthur J. Klein, Survey of Negro Collegesand Universities, Bulletin no. 7 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1929)38Holmes, The Evolution of the Negro College, 206.39Frank Bowles and Frank A. DeCosta, Between Two Worlds: A Profile of Negro Higher Edu

Medeiros, The Seeds and the Soil (Lanham, MD: University Press, 1998); "Storer College," The Morning . John Storer, a Congregationalist from Sanford, Maine, who owned numerous stores throughout that state and had made several profitable . 12 Edwin Emery, "John Storer," in The History of Sanford, Maine, 1661-1900, .