Starting in the 1880s, Storer started offering vocational and industrial courses; in 1897 the trustees made industrial education a course of study. "This formalization of manual labor at Storer corresponded with a widespread movement in the South that was predicated upon white supremacists['] notions of black inferiority. ...Manual labor made African Americans fit for citizenship by instilling Christian values and moral character." The school eventually required all normal students to take industrial courses, so that by 1904 it was training more tradespeople than teachers.