The Niagara Movement—an important civil rights group—held its first public meeting at Harpers Ferry’s Storer College on August 15, 1906.
The movement emerged from increasing philosophical differences between Booker T. Washington—the most powerful black leader of his day—and more radical intellectuals.
While Washington wanted to work more closely with the white community to improve African-Americans’ economic status, his critics—led by W. E. B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, and others—urged a more militant approach.
The one-year-old movement was named for an earlier meeting at Niagara Falls. The leaders chose Harpers Ferry for its first public meeting in honor of abolitionist John Brown, who’d led an ill-fated raid on the town’s armory in 1859.
The 1906 assembly included a barefoot pilgrimage to John Brown’s Fort, and DuBois dedicated the group’s mission to Brown. Although most of the Niagara leaders were not from West Virginia, J. R. Clifford—a graduate of Storer College and West Virginia’s first black lawyer and newspaper publisher—played an active role.
The Niagara Movement dissolved in 1911, when DuBois suggested forming a new interracial group: the NAACP.
On the night of October 16, 1859, a band of antislavery men under John Brown captured the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry. Earlier in the year, Brown had settled into a western Maryland farmhouse, where he trained his 18-man army in military tactics. His goal was to seize weapons from the national armory at Harpers Ferry and arm slaves, who would then overthrow their masters.
The raid, though, was a fiasco. Brown’s first victim was a railroad night watchman who was a free African American. The raiders also killed the town’s mayor. Infuriated—and mostly drunken—townspeople grabbed their rifles and trapped Brown’s men in the armory’s fire engine house. On the morning of October 18, U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee captured Brown and the eight raiders who had survived the ordeal. Brown was convicted of treason and hanged in nearby Charles Town six weeks later.
More than any other event, the raid divided the nation between North and South. With his last words, Brown predicted that slavery would lead to civil war. Less than a year-and-a-half later, his words would come true.
This year marks 150 years since Storer College was established in Harpers Ferry. The school came out of the Civil War first as a place to teach former slaves how to read and write, and then by the 1930s, it had evolved into a four-year, higher education institution for African-Americans. But in 1955, it closed due to lack of funding. Still, the legacy of Storer College continues to be celebrated each year in the Eastern Panhandle.
In the fall of 1946, Charles Town resident Russell Roper attended his first year at Storer College. He was 21. Before that, he’d dropped out of high school to join the United States Navy and fight in World War II. When he came home, he took an entrance exam to attend Storer College on the GI bill.
Today, Roper is 92.
“My wife went to Storer College, and I had a lot of relatives in the area that we were related to [who] went to Storer College; I can’t name ‘em all now, but it was something they were proud of,” Roper said, “and it was a part of a person’s life growing up.”
Roper played football for Storer – sporting the school’s gold and ivory colors on the field. He frequented the campus church, and it was at Storer he met his future wife.
In 1950, Roper graduated with a degree in business administration, and still uses it today running a construction company with his son.
“I’m proud to be an alumni from Storer College,” he explained, “I mean, I wouldn’t have it any other way, you know, and I graduated out of one of the largest classes that came from Storer College, and it’s sad that it just didn’t continue, that’s all I can say.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Storer College Alum Russell Roper (center). 1950 graduate.
Storer College closed five years after Roper graduated. The school lost federal funding after Brown v. Board of Education ended legal segregation in schools. Storer couldn’t afford to stay open.
But the legacy of the school continues to live on. In the 1960s, the National Park Service purchased the property and turned it into a training center for park rangers.
“This was Anthony Hall,” Park Ranger and historian John Rudy explained, “so the auditorium was upstairs, the choir room was down the hall, the president’s room was down the other hall, so this is the epicenter.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The Storer College room inside the Stephen Mather Training Center, formerly Anthony Hall.
Inside former Anthony Hall, which was once the main building on the campus, is a room honoring Storer College. It’s painted gold and red. The letters SC are displayed at the top of each wall. Photographs and paintings of teachers, principals, and notable alumni are hung. Memorabilia from the heyday of the school is on display in glass cases, and some books from the school’s library are in bookshelves.
Rudy said it’s important to remember Storer College, because of its significance in American history.
“For me, this is when America starts, almost, making up for the problems of its past,” he noted, “So in 1867, you have a country that’s full of folks who can’t read and write, former slaves, who have now been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, but now, they are completely unarmed for dealing with freedom, and Storer College is one of those places where they start to get the tools of freedom; learning to read and write, learning to count, learning to make sure that contract that you’re being handed is fair. All of that starts right here on the hill, right here in the panhandle.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The Storer College room inside the Stephen Mather Training Center, formerly Anthony Hall.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, there were over 30,000 newly freed slaves in the Shenandoah Valley. Storer College came about from a combined effort of people – the New England Freewill Baptists and a philanthropist from Maine named John Storer; all of whom wanted to help those newly freed men and women.
The site of Storer College went through several changes over time – first it was a home, then a hospital during the Civil War, then it became a primary school, then a teacher’s college, and then by the 1930s, a full-fledged, four-year institution.
“This place touches thousands of students. This place really affects the lives of the entire black community in the mid-Atlantic.” – John Rudy
Rudy said Storer was among the first wave of historically black colleges and universities in the United States, and he points to a couple prominent moments in the school’s history.
In 1881, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a keynote speech at Storer to dedicate the school. The speech was about John Brown, a white man and abolitionist who led a raid Harpers Ferry in 1859 to end slavery.
“So Douglass, a former slave, is now standing here in the 1880s, probably one of the best speakers in America, standing on a rostrum dedicating a school for former slaves; for men and women just like him who want to read and write and become famous orators; who look up to him as their idol, and the speech he gives here, he says the Civil War didn’t start in Charleston, South Carolina, it didn’t start with Fort Sumter, it started in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and it started when John Brown struck the blow against slavery in 1859. This wasn’t a war that started far away, it was a war that started right here at home,” Rudy explained.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Photo of the first American meeting of the Niagra Movement. It was held at Storer College in 1906. The Movement was a precursor to the NAACP.
Storer College also played a role in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1906, the school was the site of the first American meeting of the Niagara Movement, which would later become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP.
Rudy says part of the legacy of Storer College is about drawing strength from the heroes of the past, and 1950 alum Russell Roper agrees.
“[Storer College] set an example,” Roper said, “Well if you say, where do you go to school? Oh, I go down to Storer College. You know, it helped a lot of people. If [students] did not last but a couple years, it still helped them, it put them on the right track; it put them on the right path.”
And that’s not to say Storer College didn’t see it’s fair share of difficulties and prejudice, but both Rudy and Roper say students and faculty never gave up on the school. Even after it closed, and now 150 years later, the legacy of Storer is annually celebrated and remembered.
As some communities consider removing Confederate monuments, the state of Vermont is formally honoring West Virginia abolitionist John Brown.
John Brown’s 1859 raid was an important step in the events that led to the Civil War, and to the creation of West Virginia.
Last spring, the Vermont State Legislature approved a resolution sought by a Woodstock high school teacher designating October 16 as John Brown Day in Vermont. That’s the anniversary of the raid Brown led on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia. Brown had hoped to start an armed slave revolt. He was executed two months later.
An anti-racism symposium took place on Oct. 14 at the Woodstock Union High School in Vermont, where Brown will also be discussed on Oct. 16.
In Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, the John Brown Wax Museum is open 7 days a week from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
On May 24, 1856, John Brown and his followers killed five slaveholders at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas—a prelude to his more ambitious raid on Harpers Ferry three years later. Deeply religious, Brown committed himself in the 1850s to abolishing slavery through violent action. He took an Old Testament view of his cause, believing that the great sin of human bondage had to be purged from the land by the shedding of blood.
Brown’s murder of the slaveholders at Pottawatomie took place during a small-scale civil war being fought in the Kansas Territory over slavery. After Pottawatomie, Brown became the nation’s most prominent advocate for the violent abolition of slavery
In 1858, Brown met in Ontario, Canada, with like-minded abolitionists, to begin planning for an armed insurrection of slaves. By raiding weapons from the U.S. Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he hoped to arm slaves and launch a major revolt throughout the South.
John Brown’s subsequent raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 failed, but it did succeed in further polarizing North and South and bringing the nation closer to Civil War.
The Niagara Movement—an important civil rights group—held its first public meeting at Harpers Ferry’s Storer College on August 15, 1906.
The movement emerged from increasing philosophical differences between Booker T. Washington—the most powerful black leader of his day—and more radical intellectuals.
While Washington wanted to work more closely with the white community to improve African-Americans’ economic status, his critics—led by W. E. B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, and others—urged a more militant approach.
The one-year-old movement was named for an earlier meeting at Niagara Falls. The leaders chose Harpers Ferry for its first public meeting in honor of abolitionist John Brown, who’d led an ill-fated raid on the town’s armory in 1859.
The 1906 assembly included a barefoot pilgrimage to John Brown’s Fort, and DuBois dedicated the group’s mission to Brown. Although most of the Niagara leaders were not from West Virginia, J. R. Clifford—a graduate of Storer College and West Virginia’s first black lawyer and newspaper publisher—played an active role.
The Niagara Movement dissolved in 1911, when DuBois suggested forming a new interracial group: the NAACP.
