- Students making barrel furniture at Hampton Institute, 1900. Trades, agriculture, liberal arts and sciences were blended in this coeducational school for young Black and Native American students, founded in 1868. At a time when reconstruction and westward expansion were sorely trying most nonwhite Americans, Hampton was a cherished Page 158 →pocket of ideals made true. By 1899 it had about 1,000 students, 135 of them Indians, and all working their way through school. When the U.S. was planning its part in the great Paris Exposition of 1900, it included a Hampton exhibit as an example of hope and achievement, a sincere Progressive Era belief that education, religion and sound character could solve almost anything—even in the world outside Hampton’s beautiful campus. Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), one of the foremost photographers of her time, took the Paris Exposition photos. Her Hampton Album was temporarily lost, then recovered and shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966. These exquisite shots capture timeless moments in space, activity, composition—but, most of all, in portraits of human dignity. The great hall built by students from bricks of their own making; the geography lesson at the beach; a class in the greenhouse: all are caught in scenes that seem almost not to have gone by with the rest of their time.
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