Editing Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (section)

==== African-American tourism ====
[[File:Hill Top House, Harpers Ferry, WV.jpg|thumb|Hilltop House in Harpers Ferry, circa 1914]]
As early as 1878, the [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] ran [[excursion train]]s to Harpers Ferry from Baltimore and Washington.<ref>{{cite news |date=May 25, 1878 |title=Briefs |page=2 |newspaper=Shepherdstown Register ([[Shepherdstown, West Virginia]]) |url=https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=SR18780525.1.2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22Storer+college%22------- |url-status=live |access-date=March 18, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210416155848/https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=SR18780525.1.2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22Storer+college%22------- |archive-date=April 16, 2021 |via=[[Virginia Chronicle]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=June 9, 1878 |orig-date=June 4, 1878 |title=Excursion to Harper's Ferry. Reminiscences of the John Brown Eaid |page=2 |newspaper=Atchison Daily Champion ([[Atchison, Kansas]]) |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/78701736/excursion-to-harpers-ferry/ |url-status=live |access-date=May 31, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210602214128/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/78701736/excursion-to-harpers-ferry/ |archive-date=June 2, 2021 |via=[[newspapers.com]]}} More legible [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/78702213/excursion-to-harpers-ferry/ here].</ref> As described in a newspaper in 1873: "One need only to alight from the train and look a little envious toward [[John Brown's Fort|the old Engine House]] or the ruined walls of [[Harpers Ferry Arsenal|the old Arsenal]] in order to have a score of persons offering to become a kind of guide or to point out to your whatever you may desire to know about the great struggle which ended in the 'opening of the prison doors, the breaking of every yoke, the undoing of heavy burdens, and letting the oppressed go free."<ref>{{cite news
|title=Wayside Observations
|first=A. M.
|last=Green
|newspaper=[[The Christian Recorder]] (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
|page=4
|url=https://www.accessible.com/accessible/docButton?AAWhat=builtPage&AAWhere=QUARANTINEANDINFECTIOUSDISEASECONTROLSERIESNEWSPAPERS.QDNFR18730828_004.image&AABeanName=toc1&AACheck=1.59.1.1.1&AANextPage=/printBuiltImagePage.jsp
|via=accessiblearchives.com
|url-access=subscription
|access-date=September 4, 2021
|archive-date=August 25, 2021
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210825192344/https://www.accessible.com/accessible/docButton?AAWhat=builtPage&AAWhere=QUARANTINEANDINFECTIOUSDISEASECONTROLSERIESNEWSPAPERS.QDNFR18730828_004.image&AABeanName=toc1&AACheck=1.59.1.1.1&AANextPage=%2FprintBuiltImagePage.jsp
|url-status=live
}}</ref>

Storer, the only Black college at a location historically important to African-Americans, became a center of the civil rights movement and built the town's importance as a destination for Black tourists and excursionists. Douglass spoke there in 1881, as part of an unsuccessful campaign to fund a "John Brown professorship" to be held by an African-American. In 1906, Storer hosted the first U.S. meeting of the [[Niagara Movement]], the predecessor of the [[NAACP]], after its organizational meeting in [[Fort Erie, Ontario]].

In the late 1890s, the [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] wanted the land where the fort was located to make its line less vulnerable to flooding. Some white townspeople were eager to get rid of the fort.<ref name=Shackel/>{{rp|181}}<ref name=Moyer>{{cite book
|last1=Moyer
|first1= Teresa S.
|first2=Paul A.
|last2=Shackel
|location=[[Lanham, Maryland]]
|publisher=[[AltaMira Press]]
|title=The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: A Devil, Two Rivers, and a Dream
|date=2008}}</ref>{{rp|19}} It was dismantled and moved to Chicago for display at the [[1893 Columbian Exposition]]. Abandoned there, it was rescued and moved back to Harpers Ferry by the Baltimore and Ohio without charge, motivated by their expectation that having the fort back in Harpers Ferry would be a tourist attraction and a way to build ridership on the railroad.<ref name=Shackel/>{{rp|183}} But most whites were opposed to any commemoration of John Brown,<ref name=Shackel>{{cite book
|contribution=John Brown's Fort. A Contested National Symbol
|first=Paul A.
|last=Shackel
|authorlink=Paul A. Shackel
|pages=179–189
|editor-first1=Peggy A.
|editor-last1=Russo
|editor-first2=Paul
|editor-last2=Finkelman
|editor-link2=Paul Finkelman
|title=Terrible Swift Sword. The Legacy of John Brown
|location=[[Athens, Ohio]]
|publisher=[[Ohio University Press]]
|year=2005
|isbn=0821416308}}</ref>{{rp|182}} and it was placed on a nearby farm.

Visits by tourists, many of them Black, now began to slowly turn the town into a real tourist center and return it to growth. "Harpers Ferry proved to be one of the most visited places of leisure for nineteenth-century African Americans."<ref name="Fletcher" />{{rp|41–42}} There was a Black-owned hotel, the [[Hill Top House]], built and run by a Storer graduate, Thomas Lovett, but it catered only to white clientele.<ref>"The Week in Society," The Washington Bee, August 24, 1895, p. 5; "Harpers Ferry," The Washington Bee, June 16, 1888, p. 1; "Mr. Lovett has built a hill-top house in a lovely place. ... It is one of the loveliest places that can be found on the B. & O. Railroad, and the white people go their from all parts." Drumgoold, Kate. A Slave Girl's Story. Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. Brooklyn, 1898, p. 56. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drumgoold/menu.html</ref> In the summer Storer rented rooms to Black vacationers until 1896.<ref name=Meyer>{{cite book
|title=Five for Freedom. The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army
|first=Eugene L.
|last=Meyer
|location=Chicago
|publisher=Lawrence Hill Books ([[Chicago Review Press]])
|year=2018
|isbn=978-1613735725}}</ref>{{rp|183}} The fort was the great monument where the end of slavery began. There were so many tourists that they were a nuisance to the farmer on whose lands the fort sat, and so it was moved to Storer in 1909. There it would remain until several years after the college closed in 1955, functioning as the College Museum. Male students practiced their public-speaking skills by giving tours of it.