Hampton Negro Conference

Last updated
Hampton Negro Conference
Hampton Negro Conference advertisement 1912.png
1912 advertisement for the Conference in the Negro Year Book and Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro
Statusdefunct
Genreconference
Begins1897 (1897)
Ends1912 (1912)
FrequencyAnnually
Venue Hampton Institute
Location(s) Hampton, Virginia, United States

The Hampton Negro Conference was a series of conferences held between 1897 and 1912 hosted by the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia. [1] It brought together Black leaders from across the Southern United States, as well as some white participants, to promote, analyze, and advertise the progress of Black Americans. [1] According to a description in the Institute's catalog, through the conferences "a general summary of the material and intellectual progress of the Negro race [was] obtained." [2]

Contents

The first Conference was held from July 21 to July 22, 1897. [3] The conferences ranged over a variety of topics including health, agriculture, women's issues, crime, and education. [4] In preceding years there appear to have been more informal meetings of alumni at the Institute, also referred to as the Hampton Negro Conference, as seen for example in the papers of Booker T. Washington. [5]

The 1907 trustees report of the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen, which had directed $10,000 to the Hampton Institute in that year, stated that the conference was attended by four hundred to five hundred teachers, prominent business and professional men, and farmers. [6]

Writing in 1917, John Manuel Gandy characterized the Conference as "the clearing house of ideas of Negro activities" for its time. [7]

Publications

"Annual reports" and "Proceedings of" links
Year HathiTrust link Internet Archive link Google Books link
1897—1st [†] ·
1898—2nd
1899—3rd ·
1900—4th ·
1901—5th
1902—6th
1903—7th
1904—8th ··
1905—9th ·
1906—10th ··
1907—11th ·
1908—12th
1909—13th
1910—14th
1911—15th ·
1912—16th
  1. ^
    † The first annual report was published as an article in The Southern Worker and Hampton School Record volume 26, number 9, September 1897, whereas the annual reports and proceedings of other years were independent publications.

See also

Related Research Articles

Booker T. Washington American educator, author, orator and adviser

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Freedmens Bureau United States bureau responsible for improving freed slaves conditions

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865 and operated briefly as a U.S. government agency, from 1865 to 1872, after the American Civil War, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel...for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".

Carter G. Woodson African-American historian, writer, and journalist

Carter Godwin Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora, including African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been called the "father of black history". In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.

Away in a Manger

"Away in a Manger" is a Christmas carol first published in the late nineteenth century and used widely throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain, it is one of the most popular carols; a 1996 Gallup Poll ranked it joint second. Although it was long claimed to be the work of German religious reformer Martin Luther, the carol is now thought to be wholly American in origin. The two most-common musical settings are by William J. Kirkpatrick (1895) and James Ramsey Murray (1887).

Storer College

Storer College, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Blacks, in the town where the end of American slavery began, as Frederick Douglass famously put it, it was a unique institution whose focus changed several times. There is no one category of college in which it fits neatly.

The John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen was a financial endowment established in 1882 by John Fox Slater for education of African Americans in the Southern United States. It ceased independent operation in 1937, by which time it had disbursed about $4,000,000.

Francis Joseph Hall (1857–1932) was an American Episcopal theologian and priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Hall was the one of the first to attempt an Anglican systematic theology.

The Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe, during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "contraband of war". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia.

East India Marine Society

The East India Marine Society of Salem, Massachusetts, United States, was "composed of persons who have actually navigated the seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn, as masters or supercargoes of vessels belonging to Salem." It functioned as a charitable and educational organization, and maintained a library and museum. It flourished especially in the 1800s–1830s, a heyday of foreign trade.

Virginia Lacy Jones American librarian

Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.

The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.

The Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems was an annual conference held at Atlanta University, organized by W. E. B. Du Bois, and held every year from 1896 to 1914.

The following is a timeline of the history of Lexington, Kentucky, United States.

Colored Conventions Movement

The Colored Conventions Movement, or Negro Convention Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and fugitive African Americans including religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, and abolitionists. The conventions provided "an organizational structure through which black men could maintain a distinct black leadership and pursue black abolitionist goals."

<i>Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited</i>

Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited is a 1999 biography of American General Samuel Chapman Armstrong and his associated normal school for freedmen, Hampton Institute, written by Robert Francis Engs and published by the University of Tennessee Press. The first full biography of its kind, the book portrays Armstrong as a complex politician and administrator in the postbellum period who balanced the needs of opposed parties surrounding the Virginia school: its African American students, Southern white neighbors, and Northern philanthropist funders. Previous works presented Armstrong in a polarized fashion, as either a savior or handicap for freedmen. The book emphasizes Armstrong's upbringing as a missionary in Hawaii in the development of his educational philosophy.

Emma Ann Reynolds

Emma Ann Reynolds (1862-1917) was an African-American teacher, who had a desire to address the health needs of her community. Refused entrance to nurses training schools because of racism, she influenced the creation of Provident Hospital in Chicago and was one of its first four nursing graduates. Continuing her education, Reynolds became a medical doctor serving at posts in Texas, Louisiana and Washington, D.C. before permanently settling in Ohio and completing her practice there.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Hampton, Virginia, United States.

Ora Brown Stokes Perry

Ora Brown Stokes Perry (1882-1957) was an American educator, probation officer, temperance worker, and clubwoman based in Richmond, Virginia.

Florence Rising Curtis

Florence Rising Curtis (1873-1944) was a library educator, chiefly known for her work as director of Hampton Institute Library School beginning in 1925. Curtis was born September 30, 1873 in Ogdensburg, New York. Her father was General Newton Martin Curtis and her mother was Emeline Clark Curtis. Curtis died October 6, 1944, in Richmond, Virginia. Curtis was known as a champion of education and training for Asian and African American library students through her work overseas and with the Hampton Institute Library School.

Anna Beulah Boyd Ritchie was a founding member of the Fairmont Woman Suffrage Club, third president of the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association, and officer in the West Virginia Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

References

  1. 1 2 Brooks, Clayton McClure (2017). The Uplift Generation: Cooperation across the Color Line in Early Twentieth-Century Virginia. New York: University of Virginia Press. ISBN   9780813939506. Whites also occasionally took active roles in African American organizations, such as the Negro Organization Society (NOS). Founded in 1912, the NOS was an outgrowth of the annual interracial Hampton Negro Conference, which met from 1895 to 1912 and brought together African American leaders, particularly throughout the South, for the purpose of promoting and advertising the progress of black Americans. Although the NOS's membership was entirely African American, the group made interracial support one of its primary goals.
  2. The Forty-First Annual Catalogue. The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. 1909. p. 64. hdl:2027/hvd.32044083437780.
  3. Wedin, Carolyn (2009). "Hampton Negro Conferences". In Finkelman, Paul (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: from the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press. p. 359. ISBN   978-0-19-516779-5. OCLC   312624445.
  4. Wedin, Carolyn. Hampton Negro Conferences (Report). Oxford African American Studies Center. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.45639.
  5. Harlan, Louis Rudolph; Kaufman, Stuart B.; Smock, Raymond W., eds. (1974). "Proceedings of the Second Hampton Negro Conference". The Booker T. Washington Papers. 3. University of Illinois Press. p. 427. hdl:2027/uc1.31158001506970. ISBN   0252004108. LCCN   75186345. OCLC   787838885.
  6. "School Report". Proceedings of the Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen (Report). 39. New York: John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen. 1907. p. 55. hdl:2027/coo.31924093254153.
  7. Gandy, John Manuel (November 1, 1917). "The Negro's Friend". The Southern Workman. Hampton Institute Press: 580. hdl:2027/hvd.32044010452860. OCLC   966722976.