Hampton University (formerly Hampton Institute) is an American university located in Hampton, Virginia. The campus overlooking the northern edge of the harbor of Hampton Roads was founded on the grounds of a former plantation ["Little Scotland"] shortly after the end of the American Civil War. Among the school's famous alumni is Dr. Booker T. Washington. The historic Emancipation Oak tree, under which the Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen and under which Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, is still located on the campus today.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Union-held Fort Monroe in southeastern Virginia at the mouth of Hampton Roads became a gathering point and safe haven of sorts for fugitive slaves. These individuals were labeled "contraband" by the commander, General Benjamin F. Butler, and thereby safe from return to slave owners.

Hampton University can trace its roots to the work of Mary S. Peake of Norfolk which began in 1861 with outdoor classes taught under the landmark Emancipation Oak in the nearby area of Elizabeth City County adjacent to the old sea port of Hampton. The newly-issued Emancipation Proclamation was first read to a gathering under the historic tree there in 1863.

A class in mathematical geographyAfter the War, a normal school ("normal" meaning to establish standards or norms while educating teachers) was formalized in 1868, with former Union Brigadier General Samuel C. Armstrong (1839-1893) as its first principal. The new school was established on the grounds of a former plantation named "Little Scotland" which had a view of the great harbor of Hampton Roads. It was legally chartered in 1870 as a land grant school, and was first known as "Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute."

Typical of traditionally Indian, Mulatto and Black colleges and universities, Hampton received much of its financial support in the years following the Civil War from church groups and former officers and soldiers of the Union Army. One of the many Civil War veterans who gave substantial sums to the school was General William Jackson Palmer, a Union cavalry commander from Philadelphia, who later built the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, and founded Colorado Springs, Colorado. As the Civil War began in 1861, although his Quaker upbringing made Palmer abhor violence, his passion to see the slaves free compelled him to enter the war. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in 1894. (The current Palmer Hall on the campus is named in his honor.)

Students in a bricklaying classUnlike the wealthy Palmer, Sam Armstrong was the son of a missionary to the Sandwich Islands (which later became the U.S. state of Hawaii). However, he also had dreams and aspirations for the betterment of the newly freed slaves. He patterned his new school in the manner of his father, who had overseen the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic to the Polynesians. He also felt it was important to add the skills necessary to be self-supporting in the impoverished South. Under his guidance, a Hampton-style education became well-known as an education that combined cultural uplift with moral and manual training, or as Armstrong was fond of saying, an education that encompassed "the head, the heart, and the hands."

At the close of its first decade, the school reported a total admission in the ten years of 927 students, with 277 graduates, all but 17 of whom had become teachers. Many of them had bought land and established themselves in homes; many were farming as well as teaching; some had gone into business. Only a very small proportion had failed to do well. By another 10 years, there had been over 600 graduates. In 1888, of the 537 of them alive, three-fourths were teaching, and about half as many undergraduates were also currently teaching. It was estimated that 15,000 children in community schools were being taught by Hampton's students and alumni that year.

Among Hampton's earliest students was Booker T. Washington, who arrived from West Virginia in 1872 at the age of 16. He worked his way through Hampton, and then went on to attend Wayland Seminary in Washington D.C. After graduation there, he returned to Hampton and became a teacher. Upon recommendation of Sam Armstrong to founder Lewis Adams and others, in 1881, Washington was sent to Alabama at age 25 to head the another new normal school which became eventually became Tuskegee University. Embracing much of Armstrong's philosophy, Washington built Tuskegee into a substantial school and became nationally famous as an educator, orator, and fund-raiser as well. He started work which ultimately caused over 5,000 small community schools to be built for the betterment of black education in the South.

Website: http://www.hamptonu.edu

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