To promote education and to encourage interest in their particular work the Negro teachers of the State soon deemed it wise to take steps for more thorough cooperation of the whole teaching corps of West Virginia. White and Negro teachers were then admitted to the same teachers' institutes and in certain parts were encouraged to participate in the general discussions; but believing that they could more successfully cooperate through organizations of their own, the teachers in Charleston, in 1891, appointed from their own reading circle a committee to organize a State Teachers' Association. This committee was composed of H. B. Rice, P. B. Burbridge and Byrd Prillerman. The meeting was invited by Byrd Prillerman, as secretary, to meet at the Simpson M. E. Church in Charleston. More than fifty teachers and race leaders attended. Inasmuch as H. B. Rice, the chairman of the committee, was absent on account of illness, P. B. Burbridge, whose name was second on the list of the committee, called the meeting to order, and delivered the address of welcome. William T. McKinney of Huntington was elected temporary chairman. The Association was then permanently organized by naming Byrd Prillerman its first president and Mrs. Rhoda Weaver its first secretary. Among the most important addresses was that of C. H. Payne, an influential and educated minister then engaged in religious and editorial work at Montgomery, and that of B. S. Morgan, State Superintendent of Public Schools. Others attending the meeting were Dr. W. T. Merchant, Mrs. E. M. Dandridge, Mrs. M. A. Washington-Thompson, F. C. Smith, and J. R. Jefferson.[32] The second meeting of this Association assembled according to arrangement in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The work of the Association had by this time been taken more seriously by the teachers throughout the State. They adopted a constitution with a preamble which stated that the aim of the Association was "to elevate the character and advance the interest of the profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of popular education in the State of West Virginia." An address was delivered by State Superintendent of Schools B. S. Morgan, and papers were read by Mrs. E. M. Dandridge of Quinnimont, Miss Blanche Jeffries of Charleston, Miss Coralie Franklin of Storer College, and Principal J. E. Campbell of the West Virginia Colored Institute. Among the persons attending but not appearing on the program were C. H. Barnett, who had been recently graduated by Dennison University in Ohio; C. H. Payne, then well known in the State of West Virginia; Dr. W. S. Kearney, a graduate of the medical college of Shaw University, then beginning his practice in Huntington; J. R. Jefferson, F. C. Smith and O. A. Wells. Booker T. Washington was at this time made an honorary member. Byrd Prillerman was unanimously elected president.