Samuel C. Armstrong, who founded Hampton Institute (1868), believed that a vocational course of study would instill self-discipline, practical knowledge, and Christian character. He also saw industrial education and ordinary labor as the best vehicles for teaching former slaves to accept a subordinate place in post-emancipation economy and society. Thus he concurred with Virginia Conservatives who, besides ignoring racial terror, perpetrated laws to control blacks, including denial of suffrage and segregation. He anticipated correctly that his principles would be instilled by Hampton-trained educators such as Booker T. Washington, an honor graduate and founder of Tuskegee Institute; county training schools; and major northern philanthropies.

Efforts to institute the Hampton–Tuskegee idea generated strong opposition in schools and communities from W. E. B. Du Bois and advocates of classical learning. Both sides in the Washington–Du Bois debate closed ranks and criticized the other. Washington, in short, stressed uplift by training black hands; Du Bois by educating black minds.