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
The Pride of West Virginia Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and the District of Columbia. The band is sometimes referred to as an ambassador of the state of West Virginia, often being selected to represent the state at political events. The band was invited to the Inaugural Parades of Richard Nixon in 1969 and Ronald Reagan in 1985. In the fall of 2005 the band celebrated Constitution Day with a performance on the National Mall that was attended by Robert C. Byrd, one of West Virginia's two representatives in the US Senate. In 2008 the band performed at the inauguration of West