Virginia State University
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Image:VSU-Trojan-Image.jpg Virginia State University, located in Ettrick, Virginia (near Petersburg, in the Richmond area), was founded on March 6, 1882. It was the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for black Americans. The name used by the historically black university's athletic teams is the "Mighty Trojans." The third season of the reality television series College Hill was filmed at Virginia State University in 2006.
History
Following the American Civil War, William Mahone (1826-1895) of Petersburg, Virginia was the driving force in the linkage of Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, Southside Railroad and the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad in 1870 to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when the A,M & O was sold at auction, to form the Norfolk and Western Railway.
Mahone, a former Confederate general best known as the hero of the Battle of the Crater, later led Virginia's Readjuster Party and was a major proponent of public schools for the education of the former slaves and free blacks. He became a Senator in the Congress of the United States from Virginia, arranged for the proceeds of the A,M & O sale to help founded a school for teachers near Petersburg. In 1882, the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg was forerunner of Virginia State College, which expanded to become Virginia State University.
The school's two year branch in Norfolk, Virginia, founded in 1935, became Norfolk State College, and is now known as Norfolk State University.
From Finding a Way Out, An Autobiography by Robert Russa Moton[1], Garden City, N. Y., and Toronto,Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921
"The next morning I asked my father about the school for coloured people, which was being projected under the influence of General Mahone at Petersburg, now a State Normal School. He told me much about it. It was to open the following fall. The Hon. John M. Langston, he said, a coloured man who was as well educated as any white person that he knew of, was to be the president. He said I might go if I wished and that he would do what he could to help me. It being a state school, and he having certain strong friends in the Republican Party (General Mahone among them), Hon. B.S. Hooper, a member of Congress from the Fourth Congressional District of Virginia, would probably arrange for me to have a scholarship."
Full Text: http://docsouth.unc.edu/moton/moton.html
The founder of Virginia State University was Alfred W. Harris.