Storer College

Storer College was founded after the Civil War when a philanthropist donated $10,000 for the establishment of a school without regard to a student’s race, sex, or religion.

In 1865 Rev. Nathan Cook Brackett founded the Freewill Baptist School at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The School was located in the Lockwood House, formerly the U.S. Armory Paymaster’s home on Camp Hill. Brackett’s efforts inspired philanthropist John Storer, who lived in Sanford, Maine, to donate $10,000 for the establishment of a school in the South without regard to a student’s race, sex, or religion. Additionally, the donation had to be matched within a year and the school had to become a degree-granting college. The money was raised, and on October 2, 1867, Storer Normal School was opened at Harpers Ferry. Two years later the U.S. government transferred the Lockwood House and three other buildings on Camp Hill to the school. Frederick Douglass was an early trustee of the College.

Many local residents opposed the school, however, and over the years teachers and students were occasionally taunted or assaulted. The college primarily trained students to become teachers, but courses in higher education and industrial training were eventually added. In 1906 the campus was the location of the second conference of W.E.B. DuBois’s Niagara Movement, the predecessor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1954 legal segregation ended with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The decision also ended federal and state funding for the school, however, and it closed in 1955. In 1960 the campus of Storer College was incorporated into Harpers Ferry National Monument. Today the National Park Service owns the former Storer College property and uses Anthony Hall as the Stephen T. Mather Training Center.