Hampton Institute student photograph album

The identity of the student who owned the Hampton Institute photograph album is not known. The history of the Hampton Institute reflects decades of a movement towards more inclusiveness and diversity. The institute originally evolved from a camp near Fort Monroe, Virginia where African Americans were arriving in 1861 during the American Civil War to find freedom from being enslaved in the South. Mary Peake was a free African American woman who held the first class of about twenty students under a simple oak tree. “Today the tree still stands on the campus of the Hampton Institute as a lasting symbol of the promise of education for all, even in the face of adversity.”

Several Union Army Generals (General Benjamin Butler and Brigadier General Samuel Armstrong) founded and improved the school, naming it the Butler School. It was associated with the Freedmen's Bureau of the Ninth District of Virginia (Little Scotland which was adjacent to the school), the Whittier School and the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. "During the night of April 18, 1878, a group of Native Americans arrived in Hampton from Fort Sill, where they had been imprisoned at the close of the Red River War. Several buildings were constructed during this twenty-year span, including Whipple Barn, and Wigwam Dormitory. In 1868, Booker T. Washington was a student at the school.

In 1930, it became the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. 1n 1940 the Institute hired more diverse faculty to fill the roles of high-ranking administrative positions. In 1949, Dr. Dr. Alonzo Graseano Moron became the first African American president. In the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, noted civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, visited the Hampton campus. In 1957 Rosa Parks moved to the Hampton area where she worked on campus as a hostess at The Holly Tree Inn. On February 11, 1960, a group of Hampton Institute students were the first in Virginia to stage a lunch counter sit-in, to protest local business' refusal to serve blacks and whites equally.

"In 1984, after a nine-month study of Hampton Institute's rapid growth and development in quality of students, faculty and academic offerings, the recommendation was made to change the name to Hampton University."Today, over 150 years after its inception, Hampton University continues to break new ground in academic achievement, staying true to General Armstrong's original promise of The Standard of Excellence, An Education for Life."

Source: Based on the Hampton University website: https://www.hamptonu.edu/about/history.cfm Retrieved 9/17/21 Equal Opportunity Accessibility