This story was originally published in the August 2017 issue of Wonderful West Virginia. To subscribe, visit wonderfulwv.com.
West Virginia’s historically black colleges and universities have helped to shape the world.
It wasn’t enough just to free the slaves, it quickly became apparent after the Civil War. There had to be pathways for freedmen and freedwomen to become full participants in society. Colleges dedicated to the education of black Americans were a critical part of the solution.
A few black colleges operated already before the war. But dozens were established after 1865 to serve the newly freed slaves and their families some with federal backing, and many through affiliation with the African Methodist Episcopal and other churches.
“The original purpose was to educate African Americans really in two main subjects: teaching and nursing,” says Anthony L. Jenkins, president of West Virginia State University, one of West Virginia’s two remaining Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). “The actual push was to educate African American women before African American men, and those were heavily female-dominated work environments or careers even then.”
Here is a look at three of West Virginia’s HBCUs, past and present, and some of the world-changing men and women who emerged from their halls.
image courtesy of West Virginia State Archives
Storer College (1867-1955)
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Nathan Cook Brackett of the U.S. Christian Commission set up schools in the Potomac region of the Virginias to educate freed slaves. His teachers were missionaries from the Northeast, but it would make more sense, he realized, to train and employ black teachers for the task. With the backing of Maine philanthropist John Storer
and the Free Will Baptist Society, Brackett established Storer Normal School in Harpers Ferry. It occupied the Lockwood House and other former armory structures.
Located at the site of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on a U.S. armory, Storer Normal School, later Storer College, held a unique place among black colleges. The escaped slave-turnedsocial reformer Frederick Douglass served as a Storer trustee and delivered a famous speech about John Brown on campus in 1881. An early meeting of the Niagara Movement, forerunner to the NAACP, took place on campus in 1906.
Storer became a four-year college in 1938 but was never accredited. When the Supreme Court ended school segregation in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, the state of West Virginia withdrew support for the college. It closed in 1955.
Storer’s campus became part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and may be visited there today.
Bluefield State College (1895-present)
Black Americans migrated by the thousands in the decades after the Civil War to work in West Virginia’s Southern coalfields. In 1895, the West Virginia Legislature established the Bluefield Colored Institute to educate blacks in the region.
Like many other black colleges, Bluefield started primarily as a teaching institute—it was renamed Bluefield State Teachers College in 1929. The name changed again in 1943 to Bluefield State College to recognize its expansion into a broader curriculum.
Brown v. Board of Education led to diversification of the student body and faculty. Tensions flared in the 1960s as white enrollment grew and the college’s first white president appointed only white faculty. When a bomb tore through the campus gym in 1968, the president closed the dormitories for good, transforming the college to a commuter-only campus.
Today, Bluefield State serves students at two campuses: the original campus in Bluefield and a satellite campus in Beckley. Its enrollment stands at about 1,360 and it grants several hundred associate’s and bachelor’s degrees every year.
West Virginia State University (1891-present)
The second Morrill Act of 1890 required states to either show that race was not an admissions criterion at their land grant colleges or establish separate institutions for black students. In response, West Virginia established the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1891. It offered the equivalent of a high school education as well as vocational training and teacher preparation. It later offered college degrees and, after achieving accreditation, became West Virginia State College in 1929.
State integrated quickly following Brown v. Board of Education: Five years later the student population was less than half black, and 10 years later it was less than a quarter black.
As one of 19 land grant HBCUs across the nation, State has the same teaching, research, and extension mission as West Virginia University. “We have 38 extension programs throughout West Virginia,” President Jenkins says. “We help annually over 20,000 West Virginians—whether it’s dealing with livestock, growing crops, nutrition, health, wellness, all of those things.”
Granted university status in 2004, WVSU has more than 3,500 students and awards more than 400 bachelor’s and master’s degrees each year. “We are a public, land grant, historically black institution that has evolved over the years as a fully accessible, racially integrated, multigenerational institution with over 22 nations represented,” Jenkins says, “a living laboratory of human relations. I see us as a university of national distinction that helps students find their passion—and we’ve done that for 126 years.”
written by Pam Kasey