Welcome to the Hampton University Archives Collections Research Portal. The Archives has the most complete Afro American and Native American student records of any historically black college or university in the United States, which makes this web portal a very valuable resource for researchers in black education. Specific types of documents in the archives include letters to and from the university campus by past presidents and faculty; minutes from faculty meetings, discipline books, and individual files on students who have attended Hampton, many of which begin prior to the student's arrival at Hampton and continue after his/her departure.

This portal will feature various archival items that are housed in the Archives. The archive's holdings are more than 8 million documentary items and over 50,000 photographs and glass negatives reflecting Hampton's role in American education, educational philosophy, political activities, labor issues, and business and international relations. Within the collection are approximately 2 million items and 19,000 photographs relating to the American Indian Education Program. Among these photographs are historic images taken on western reservations that exist nowhere else in the world.

We hope this portal will help historians, researchers, faculty members, and students explore more deeply the University’s heritage, the traditions that have come down through the years, the great names that have stood out in Hampton’s history, the many lives of service led by Hampton’s graduates and the records of less renowned people whom conventional history has ignored yet whose accomplishments, when scrutinized, may reveal accurately an interesting period of a significant issue.

Archives Manager, Dr. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward (Vanessa.Thaxton-Ward@hamptonu.edu)