Virginia panel begins to grapple with racial history of state colleges, universities

A new state commission will seek documentation on campus expansions from dozens of Virginia public colleges and universities

By Louis Hansen

The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO

RICHMOND - For decades, Virginia’s public colleges and universities expanded campuses to accommodate growing student populations – often at the expense of Black communities.

State and local elected leaders are just now probing what price these communities paid. That cost is hard to determine, officials said Monday at a state hearing, and community members are impatient for a reckoning.

“Often, the anger has gone on from generation to generation because of the injustices that have occurred,” said Del. Delores McQuinn, chair of the Commission to Study the History of the Uprooting of Black Communities by Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Commonwealth. “Is there a way to clean this up, to make it better, to bring some form of reparation?”

Del. Delores McQuinn, chair of the Commission to Study the History of the Uprooting of Black Communities by Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Commonwealth, speaks during a meeting of the commission on Monday, December 2, 2024. Photo from Virginia House of Delegates.

The commission expects to send letters to 43 public colleges and universities across the state in the next several weeks, seeking information on property acquisitions and other historical documentation on campus growth, McQuinn said. The panel will also consider possible redress and restorative justice for displaced families.

The state commission meeting marks the first steps to engaging the state’s higher education facilities about past campus expansions, which sometimes involved seizing or otherwise acquiring land in stable Black communities and serving as a de facto tool to segregation.

The Virginia commission was launched after a series by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO and ProPublica found widespread displacement of Black neighborhoods by booming university growth beginning in the 1950s.

For example, under just one federal program between 1959 and 1966, roughly 8,000 families of color across the country were removed from their homes for college and university expansions. 

The Uprooted series expanded the national discussion over how universities make amends for racial injustices, which included using enslaved persons to build campuses and instituting discriminatory admissions policies. Schools and higher education institutions are now re-examining their histories with Black communities, even as educators face a backlash against discussing institutional racism in the U.S.

Virginia passed the Enslaved Ancestors College Access Scholarship and Memorial Programs law in 2021 requiring the five schools established before the end of the Civil War to address their history with slavery. The institutions – the University of Virginia, College of William & Mary, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University and Longwood - must establish scholarships and provide funds for community-based economic development. 

Campus expansions at Christopher Newport University, Old Dominion University and UVA targeted Black neighborhoods, often thriving business and social hubs for a segregated community, the series found.

In Newport News, white city leaders in the early 1960s chose the predominantly Black Shoe Lane community over less expensive sites to build the new Christopher Newport College. Several properties in the thriving middle-class neighborhood were acquired by the city, often using eminent domain. White city leaders privately said they wanted to eliminate a neighborhood they called the “Black spot” next to an all-white country club.

CNU’s expansion continued for decades. Today, just a handful of homes in the original neighborhood remain.

The City of Newport News and CNU in January announced a joint commission to study decades of property acquisitions in and around the Shoe Lane community and consider possible redress for displaced residents and their families.

Christopher Newport University Provost Quentin Kidd, left, and Newport News Vice Mayor Curtis Bethany speak at the commission hearing on Monday, December 2, 2024. Photo from Virginia House of Delegates

The hearing in Richmond Monday for the first time highlighted efforts by the local task force. The two co-chairs of the local commission, CNU Provost Quentin Kidd and Newport News Vice Mayor Curtis Bethany, said they were optimistic about researching and telling a full story of the Shoe Lane community. 

The task force has identified about 125 properties acquired to create and expand CNU’s 2-square mile campus since its conception in the early 1960s, Kidd said. One goal is to produce an interactive website detailing the history of the properties and people who lived there, he said. 

Kidd and Bethany said the initial research into the Shoe Lane neighborhood has taken longer than expected. Task force members have spoken with just a few residents, Bethany said. 

“That has been a challenge, to a degree,” Bethany said.

Andrew Millard, pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in Newport News, said the local task force needs to be more transparent. The only direct response he received from the task force, he said, was that “we have no right to expect answers to our questions, and that we’re doing more harm than good.”

McQuinn invited members of the CNU-Newport News task force to testify Monday to share research and guide future efforts across the state.

Acting on a measure submitted by McQuinn, state lawmakers approved funding in May for the Uprooting study commission. McQuinn said she will seek additional funding in the upcoming General Assembly session.

“It’s important for the communities to share what they know,” McQuinn said. “Whatever history they may have.”

Reach Louis Hansen at louis.hansen@whro.org.