Rather than attaching it to the Fort at its present location, as originally planned, by request from the Black community the Park Service located it on the former Storer campus, at the Fort's former location. Storer graduates In 1895, the 20 "free schools" in Jefferson County were all taught by Storer graduates. Storer graduates were also found "in other important schools all over the state", and from Maryland in the northeast to Texas in the southwest. An icon for African Americans During the 88 years it existed, Storer had a great symbolic importance to American Blacks. Storer and Harpers Ferry were in fact a Black destination. Many Black tourists came to Harpers Ferry; there was a hotel catering to them, the Hilltop House, built and managed by a Black Storer graduate, Thomas Lovett. In the summer, Storer rented dormitory rooms to tourists and summer boarders, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran excursion trains from Baltimore and Washington. Frederick Douglass's speech, 1881 Storer College was a site of various important events in West Virginia and national African-American history. In 1881, the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery as a young man in the antebellum years and become a noted orator, and who was on Storer's Board of Trustees, delivered his famous speech on abolitionist John Brown at Storer College. His intent was to raise funds for an endowed John Brown professorship, to be held by a black man. (It never materialized.) There was a "large gathering of people" from Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and some from as far as New England. They attended a ceremonial laying of the cornerstone for Anthony Hall. National League of Colored Women visit, 1896 In July 1896, the first national convention of the National League of Colored Women, meeting in Washington, D.C., visited Harpers Ferry, the John Brown Fort, and the college. They passed a resolution condemning "the authorities of Storer College for preventng those who have contributed for thesupport of Lincoln Hall from using the latter during the present summer, as has been the custom heretofore." Niagara Movement conference, 1906 The Niagara Movement, predecessor of the NAACP, is closely linked to Storer. Formed by a group of leading African-American intellectuals, the Niagara Movement planned a campaign to eliminate discrimination based on race. The movement's leader, W. E. B. Du Bois, a sociologist with a PhD, rejected the prevalent theory of