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Outdoor classes composed of enslaved African Americans had long been held under this tree. In 1863 under the limbs of the Emancipation Oak, Union soldiers first read the Emancipation Proclamation to the freed African American community of Hampton, Virginia. Near the oak, five years later, Union Army Brigadier General Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University), a school for young leaders of a recently emancipated people.