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One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little coloured school in our town.  –Booker T. Washington

Booker’s account seems to indicate that the miners believed Hampton Institute took anyone regardless of race.  This may have been true in theory, just as Storer College in Harper’s Ferry aimed to accept all races.  In practice, both were established to provide an education which had been denied to black people and since there were many other opportunities for white students, both institutions were attended almost exclusively by black pupils. 

The differences between the two schools was also important. They had similar goals, but divergent philosophies on how to achieve them.  Storer was strongly associated with the Niagara Movement and later the NAACP.  The founders of Storer were largely from the north.  They saw education as a necessary part of claiming and demanding a societal reality of true equality. Hampton and what became Booker Washington’s Tuskegee Institute had to find ways to thrive in a more hostile environment.   They focused on cooperation with white institutions with the aim of gradual acceptance through excellence.  I can’t help but wonder how Booker’s public persona might have been altered had he instead heard about Storer that day in the mines. It would make an interesting alternate history at any rate.

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