Storer College
Storer College postcard (1910)
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Former names
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Storer Normal School |
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| Active | 1865–1955 |
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Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, United States 39°19′25.64″N 77°44′7.49″W / 39.3237889°N 77.7354139°WCoordinates: 39°19′25.64″N 77°44′7.49″W / 39.3237889°N 77.7354139°W |
Storer College was a historically black college located in Harpers Ferry in Jefferson County, West Virginia. It operated from 1865 until 1955. Its former campus is now part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
For over 88 years, the place of education ultimately known as "Storer College" stood high above Harpers Ferry on Camp Hill. Beginning life as a one-room school for freedmen, Storer grew into a full-fledged degree-granting college open to all races, creeds, and colors, and men and women. Former slaves thrown into the world with no training, no skills, and no education found at Storer a place to learn to read and write, to teach others in their community, and to develop marketable skills. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren found place of learning in the days of racial segregation. Students left Storer with the education, the training, and perhaps most importantly, the sense of worth needed to make their way in an unsympathetic society.
The first building on Camp Hill, a portion of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to open its doors to students was the Lockwood House, formerly the US Armory Paymaster's quarters. In 1865, as a representative of New England's Freewill Baptist Home Mission Society, Reverend Nathan Cook Brackett established a primary school in the war torn building, teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic to the children of former slaves. This school was part of a larger national effort by northern philanthropic organizations and the government's Freedmen's Bureau to educate the thousands of African Americans freed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. From Harpers Ferry, Reverend Brackett directed the efforts of dedicated missionary teachers, who provided a basic education to thousands of former slaves congregated in the relatively safe haven of the Shenandoah Valley by the end of the American Civil War.
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