For generations, Virginia’s public colleges and universities have expanded into stable Black communities, dismantling neighborhoods and displacing families.
For State Sen. Lamont Bagby, the challenge is getting institutions to cooperate with the state commission investigating that history. He noted how quickly many universities reacted to the Trump Administration’s targeting of DEI and LGBTQ initiatives.
“They jumped,” Bagby said Tuesday at a hearing of the state Uprooting Commission. “Are they jumping for this?”
The commission requested that each university establish a liaison to assist with research and communication. Bagby, vice chairman of the commission, added that a school’s cooperation should be considered when university officials come to the Capitol and request resources.
“We want to make sure they’re aware,” said Bagby, D-Richmond.
The state-approved commission revealed additional details – from property records, published stories, city accounts, family histories and testimony from around the state – about the scope of displacement dating back to the 19th century. The committee’s work will help guide land policy decisions and potential reparations for displaced communities and families.
The commission, established in 2024, follows the work of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO and ProPublica, which produced the award-winning Uprooted series. The stories examined how Virginia colleges and universities used eminent domain or its threat to force out families, breaking up communities and seizing property that could have produced generational wealth.
Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, and Longwood University in Farmville expanded in the 1950s and ‘60s, uprooting scores of Black families for schools that, at the time, were segregated.
Public and private universities across the country used similar tactics, from New York and Pennsylvania to Colorado and California.
In Virginia, commission researchers have focused on six institutions: CNU, ODU, Longwood, Virginia Tech’s agricultural center in Suffolk, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia.
CNU, ODU and Longwood have provided the most comprehensive information on their expansions, researchers told the commission. They have conducted independent research on the use of eminent domain or its threat to build new classrooms, dorms and parking lots.
UVA’s history of displacement dates to the 19th century, when it removed an African-American neighborhood known as Canada, and persists today in the school’s planned expansions in the Fifeville neighborhood, according to researchers.
In Farmville, the first recorded property dispute came in 1910, when Mrs. Mary Burger wrote to the city newspaper to fight the State Female Normal School’s effort to take her family home. The family eventually was forced to sell three years later for $2,198.
VCU largely benefited from other urban renewal projects, researchers said, including interstate construction that cut through Black business districts and neighborhoods including Jackson Ward and Carver.
Del. Bonita Anthony, D-Norfolk, said the research is helpful to examine the patterns and land-use policies that have harmed minority communities. “We know the history; it’s not just hearsay,” she said. “There’s really not just one institution that went about it the same way.”
The issue remains relevant as governments decide where new developments, including data centers, battery storage and fuel stations, are built. “It’s good to have a record,” she said, “so we don’t repeat it.”
CNU and the city of Newport News are conducting similar research into the university’s decimation of the Shoe Lane neighborhood. Researchers estimate between 160 and 180 parcels were taken, starting in the 1960s.
The joint committee is expected to release a report as early as September, said Joni Ivey, a member of the state and local commissions.
In May, family and community members from Newport News told the local group about CNU’s impact on their community. Some residents suggested restitution could come in the form of scholarships for descendants of uprooted families, plaques or financial compensation.
“Just an acknowledgment,” Annice Ritter, a Georgia resident with family roots in the Shoe Lane neighborhood, suggested. “That was the first step in finding some sort of restitution and healing.”
Reach Louis Hansen at louis.hansen@whro.org.
