Emancipation, Education, and the Black Freedom Movement

Christiansburg Institute's farm campus began on land once worked on by enslaved people. The Lattimer plantation grew corn and wheat, and milled their products to make flour. Most of the farm work was done by enslaved people.

The 1850 census says the Lattimer's owned eight slaves. Like most slaves in Montgomery County, most were female and all were under the age of twenty-one.

Picture right: "Lattimer's Mill" shows the grist mill with the "Big House" in the background.

1850 census: 1,471 enslaved people

1860 census: 2,219 enslaved people

This meant that 21% of people in Montgomery County were enslaved.

Pictured right: "1850 slave census" listing the ages and gender of Lattimer's slaves.

Union victory in the Civil War meant the end of slavery but it did not guarantee equality to recently emancipated slaves. 

The newly established Freedmen's Bureau sent agent Charles Schaeffer to Southwest Virginia in 1866 to help emancipated slaves start a new life. The bureau provided food and housing, established schools, and offered legal assistance to the mostly poor and illiterate population.

Most African Americans in Montgomery County continued to work on their former owners’ plantations and farms under unfair contracts. Schaeffer saw white planters cheating illiterate black laborers out of fair wages and knew black workers needed an education if they were to prosper.  

Pictured right: "Portrait of Charles Schaeffer."

Schaeffer and several black leaders started Christiansburg School No. 1 in a rented room in freedwoman of color Nancy Cambell’s cabin. The school was small compared to people’s thirst for education.

Schaeffer noted that:

“the Freedmen manifest an intense desire to learn and improve and become good citizens…”

Within the year, the school served 88 students of all ages. By 1868, two teachers taught 232 students, including 85 “night scholars,” adults who worked during the day.

Pictured right: "Nancy Campbell's Cabin" where C.I.'s first classes were held.

The school moved into a two-story schoolhouse in the 1870s. The school was renamed as “Christiansburg Normal Institute” and started training African American teachers. 

In 1885, the community built two large brick structures on Zion’s Hill that served as a church and a new school house.

Pictured right: The "Old Hill School."

The school grew under the leadership of Schaeffer and the First Board of Deacons. The deacons were notable black men from the county: C. Minnis Hadean, Norville Curtis, Jacob Seldom, Samuel Hayden, William Curtis, Henry Brown, and Carrington Vaughn.

C. Minnis Hadean was a literate blacksmith from Christiansburg.

In a letter to a fellow Freedmen’s agent, Schaeffer described Hadean as:

“one of the best colored men in the state.”

Pictured right: "Men building a fence at the Hill School."

The U.S. government closed the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872, creating a funding issue for the school. In search of new financial support, Schaeffer deeded the school to a Pennsylvanian group of Quakers called the Friends Freedmen’s Association (FFA) in 1885.

FFA support brought a lot of changes. The FFA quickly changed the name from Christiansburg Normal Institute to Christiansburg Industrial Institute (C.I.I.). They fired the white teachers, including Schaeffer and his wife, and hired a new black teaching staff.

Hiram H. Thweatt became principal but his tenure was short. Schaeffer dissaproved of the industrial curriculum and thought Thweatt was incompetent. Schaeffer held a lot of sway in the community and spent years petitioning for Thweatt's removal. Thweatt was fired in 1895 after nine years at C.I.I.

Pictured right: "The Freedman's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man." Popular opinion, fueled by racist sentiment, turned against the agency. Congress ended the agency and its services in 1872.

In 1895, the FFA asked renowned educator and black leader Booker T. Washington to reorganize the school in the shape of Hampton and Tuskegee Institute. 

The FFA told Washington that

"We sincerely wish we could see a Hampton or Tuskegee school in Christiansburg, with all the interest and enthusiasm as the other."

Washington couldn’t leave Tuskegee but he agreed to act as supervisor. The appointment of Washington as supervisor marked the end of Schaeffer’s control over the school and the start of black leadership.

Pictured right: "Booker T. Washington speaking at C.I.I." In this picture, Washington is speaking to a racially mixed crowd of 5,000 people.

Washington and other prominent black leaders visited C.I.I.'s campus several times to speak to the student body and the wider community about their vision for the future of their race.

Washington recommended Charles Marshall, Tuskegee’s top graduate, for principal. Marshall exemplified Washington’s vision of black progress through education and entrepreneurship. 

Marshall was born to former slaves in Kentucky. He worked in a tobacco factory as a young child and then in a cooper’s shop, where he earned enough money to attend Tuskegee.

Marshall's tenure was marked by both struggle and growth. Despite support from the North, money was in short supply as they developed the industrial curriculum. The money raised went into the school, so much so that faculty members shared a single spoon between them.

Despite these difficulties, Marshall made C.I.I. a successful industrial school during his tenure, serving as principal until his death in 1906. His vice principal, Edgar Long, became principal and served until his own death in 1924.

Pictured right: "Charles Marshall, Edgar A. Long, and other C.I.I. faculty."

In 1895, Marshall expanded the curriculum to include the first four "industries": cooking, sewing, carpentry, and agriculture. Wheelwrighting, blacksmithing, and printing were added over the next three years. 

Students were expected to learn a trade so they could support themselves once they graduated. This was part of Washington's economic philosophy. He believed African Americans must focus on educating themselves and learning useful trades. Hard work and economic progress would prove the value of blacks to white people:

“Economic independence is the foundation of political independence…" -Booker T. Washington

Pictured right: "Charles Marshall and Edgar A. Long in the Trades Building."

An industrial education required land to teach agriculture and industries. The FFA purchased eighty-seven acres of land two miles west of the hill campus. The not-to-distant echoes of slavery haunted this land. The “Mansion House” served as a classroom building and teachers’ residence. Male students lived in the old slave cabins. 

In a speech to the 1906 class, an alum noted the irony: 

“A plantation upon which men and women were driven to unrequited toil by the stern command of a task... master had been converted into a model training farm.... The slave mansion, once the headquarters of master and owner of human beings, has become the seat of instruction where the posterity of the victims of servitude are being fitted for Christian citizenship.”

Pictured right: "The Mansion House."

The increased industrial emphasis and move to farmland once inhabited by enslaved ancestors was widely unpopular with students at the beginning. Enrollment plummeted from 240 to 60 students.

Marshall and his staff worked tireless to make the farm prosperous. After a few good years, they turned public opinion in their favor and enrollment began to grow again.

Pictured right: "C.I.I. campus, featuring the barn and Morris Hall."

Traditional academic classes remained important despite the new emphasis on trades. Academic classes demonstrated C.I.I. students’ interest in the rights and roles of African Americans throughout the country. English classes read books like "Hamlet and the Future of the American Negro, and "Selections from Ruskin, Tennyson, Bacon and from Negro authors.” 

The printing shop began publishing a student paper called “C.I.I. Echo” where students wrote their observations about national events and black leaders.

Pictured right: "C.I.I. Observes Negro History Week" in the C.I.I. Echo.