Hampton University
N 37° 01.392 W 076° 19.832
18S E 381647 N 4098273
Hampton University is a historically and predominantly black university located in Hampton, VA.
Waymark Code: WM4ECT
Location: Virginia, United States
Date Posted: 08/12/2008
Views: 24
(Coordinates are for the plaque designating Hampton Institute a National Historic Landmark, so designated in 1974. Plaque is located next to Emancipation Oak.)
The campus overlooking the northern edge of the harbor of Hampton Roads was founded on the grounds of "Little Scotland", a former plantation in Elizabeth City County not far from Fort Monroe and the Grand Contraband Camp, each tangible symbols of freedom for former slaves shortly after the end of the American Civil War.
First led by former Union General Samuel C. Armstrong, among the school's famous alumni is educator Dr. Booker T. Washington. Under what is now called the Emancipation Oak tree, Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, in defiance of a Virginia law against teaching slaves, free blacks and mulattos to read or write, a law which had cut her own education short years earlier. Several years later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the same historic tree, which is still located on the campus today, and also serves as a symbol for the modern City of Hampton. The Emancipation Oak was cited by the National Geographic Society as one of the 10 great trees in the world.
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute became simply Hampton Institute in 1930 and became Hampton University in 1984.
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