Storer College

Storer College was a school established in 1867 to educate freed Black men and women in the aftermath of the Civil War, operating on the heights above Harpers Ferry until 1955. Its campus occupied the former Union Army camp, and the mix of repurposed military buildings and purpose-built school structures gave it an unusual architectural character. Several of the original buildings survive and are interpreted by the National Park Service.

The college has an important civil rights history beyond its educational mission: it was the site of the second meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1906, where Du Bois and his colleagues explicitly linked their struggle to John Brown's legacy. The Lockwood House, one of the original college buildings, now houses an exhibit on the history of the school and its role in Reconstruction and the long struggle for civil rights.

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A story
In August 1906, W.E.B. Du Bois and others gathered at Storer College to hold the second meeting of the Niagara Movement — the civil rights organization that was the direct predecessor of the NAACP. They marched barefoot at dawn to John Brown's Fort in a deliberate invocation of Brown's legacy. The meeting is considered one of the foundational moments of the 20th-century civil rights movement.