1880 HAMPTON NORMAL & INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE CARD - GEN. S.C. ARMSTRONG

Description

We are offering an "informational" card for the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institite of Hampton, VA.  Circa 1880.  With picture of the institute's founder, Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong on the front.  (The institute later became Hampton University)
The institute was opened in 1868 as "The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute" providing young black Americans training in manual labor jobs, and lessons in morals and hygiene, but only provided minimal academic instruction.  (10 years later, in 1878, the institute began accepting Native Americans.)
Armstrong believed that blacks (although freed) would continue to serve as the south's laboring class in the foreseeable future.
The students were required to work in the school's farms and trade shops.  The goal was to create generations of black teachers who would be indoctrinated with his ideas and pass on the same training to other black students.
Booker T. Washington was one of the institute's graduates who later became an educator.
As far back as 1903, Hampton Institute has been criticized by people, especially among black intellectuals, who believe it served only to perpetuate their socioeconimic subordination. T
he "practical" education the students received was training them to fill exactly the same roles that blacks held under slavery.  They protested that blacks also needed access to higher education in order to progress.
As the school progressed, the name was changed to the Hampton Istitute in 1929.  By 1984, the school, a prominent liberal arts and teachers' college, changed its name to Hampton University.
Samuel C. Armstrong (1839-1893)
was a general who fought for the Union in the Civil War.  He was the son of missionaries who spent his youth in Hawaii.