West Virginia State University West Virginia State University West Virginia State University (WVSU) is an historically black public university founded in 1891 in Institute, West Virginia. In the Charleston-metro area, the school is usually referred to simply as "State" or "West Virginia State". It is one of the original group of African American land-grant colleges established by the second Morrill Act of 1890. African-American students currently are a minority of attending students. The University is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The university's Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute is divided into three programmatic divisions: WVSU Extension Service, WVSU Agricultural and Environmental Research
West Virginia on June 20, 1863. Meanwhile, officers for the new state were chosen, while Gov. Pierpont moved his pro-Union Virginia capital to Union-occupied Alexandria, where he asserted and exercised jurisdiction over all of the remaining Virginia counties within the federal lines. The question of the constitutionality of the formation of the new state was later brought before the Supreme Court of the United States in Virginia v. West Virginia. Berkeley and Jefferson counties lying on the Potomac east of the mountains, in 1863, with the consent of the reorganized government of Virginia voted in favor of annexation to West Virginia. Many