On January 1, 1863 during the dark days of the War Between the States, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the enslaved people of the Confederacy.  Under an oak on what is now the Hampton University campus,  Lincoln’s Proclamation was read to the people of Hampton.   Classes had been conducted near the oak tree since September 17, 1861.  The teacher was Mary Peake, a free-born woman of color, who for years  ignored statues forbidding the education of blacks. She started some of the first organized programs to teach both free and enslaved African Americans to read and write. The Emancipation Oak is a significant  African American landmark.  Five years after the Proclamation was issued, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later University) was established to educate the newly freed African Americans.

Established the same year as the school, the Hampton University Museum is one of the oldest museums in the state.  The African art collection, exhibited in the museum, is one of the first collections gathered by an African American, missionary-explorer, Dr. William H. Sheppard.  There is also an extensive and historic Native American collection.  Currently located on the waterfront overlooking the Hampton River and Hampton Roads Harbor, the museum is in the 1881 Academy Building, a National Historic Landmark (there are plans for a new, state-of-the-art museum building).

The African collection has about 3,500 objects from nearly 100 ethnic groups and cultures. Between 1890 and 1910, Sheppard, a Hampton alumnus, gathered 400 objects that became the nucleus of the museum’s collection.   The material on display deserves close scrutiny since much of the work is exquisitely detailed with intricate bead patterns or carvings.  Included are a battle-ax from Zaire, a Kuba royal belt, a Zulu bride costume, a Kenya headdress and an impressive hunter’s shirt that is from West Africa.

The Native American galleries offer a fascinating look at the artistic handiwork from more than 93 Native American tribes.  It encompasses over 1,600 pieces that the museum has collected since 1878.  That was the year the federal government began sending Native American students from the western reservations to Hampton.  A significant number of Native Americans attended the school until 1923, when the federal government ended its support of this educational program.  The museum’s outstanding collection resulted from this association with Native Americans from these diverse tribes.

In 1967, the Harmon Foundation presented a noted fine arts collection to the museum.  Much of the museum’s 1,500-piece collection of paintings, graphics and sculpture was part of this gift.  Harlem Renaissance-inspired artists are well-represented, including two of Jacob Lawrence’s earliest series.  The museum also has nine paintings by Henry O. Tanner, perhaps the most renowned African American artist.   His evocative canvas, The Banjo Lesson, done in 1893, is a favorite with visitors. 

The Oceanic collection includes 18 cultures: Melanesian, Micronesian, Polynesian and Australian work.  There is also a significant Asian collection as well as a growing Hampton University history collection. 

The Hampton University Museum is open Monday through Friday 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. and weekends NOON to 4:00 P.M.  While on the campus be sure to stop at the Booker T. Washington Memorial Garden with its imposing statue of Hampton’s most famous graduate as well as the William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library which has two imposing murals by Dr. John Biggers.