 The school's 1911–1912 catalog emphasized the importance of teaching skills to black students–carpentry, painting, blacksmithing, plastering, papering, and shoemaking for the men, and domestic science, sewing and millinery work for the women.The school also aimed to prepare black teachers.The academic curriculum was equal to the ordinary high school course, with English, arithmetic, algebra, history, geography, music, government, physics, botany, and Latin or German.