About Virginia State University

Virginia State University (VSU or Virginia State) is a historically black public land-grant academe in Ettrick, Virginia. Founded on March 6, 1882 (1882-03-06), Virginia State developed as the United States’s first thoroughly state-supported four-year institution of highly developed learning for black Americans. The academe is a member literary of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 32,420. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along later than the city of Colonial Heights) with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. The city is 21 miles (34 km) south of the historic commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond.

It is located at the slip line (the head of navigation of rivers upon the U.S. East Coast) of the Appomattox River (a tributary of the longer larger James River which flows east to meet the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at the Hampton Roads harbor and the Atlantic Ocean). In 1645, the Virginia House of Burgesses ordered Fort Henry built, which attracted both traders and settlers to the area. The Town of Petersburg, chartered by the Virginia legislature in 1784, incorporated three upfront settlements, and in 1850 the legislature elevated it to city status.

Petersburg grew as a transportation hub and then developed industry. It was the complete destination on the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System, which opened in 1816, to a city mostly rebuilt after a devastating 1815 fire. When its Appomattox River harbor silted up, investors built an 8-mile railroad to City Point on the James River, which opened in 1838 (and was acquired by the city and renamed the Appomattox Railroad in 1847). As discussed below, that became one of four railroads built (some with dispensation subsidies) constructed (with estranged terminals to the advantage of local freight haulters) before the American Civil War. In 1860, the city’s industries and transportation combination to make it the state’s second largest city (after Richmond). It partnered commerce as far-off inland as Farmville, Virginia at the foothills of the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains chain, to shipping new east into the Chesapeake Bay and North Atlantic Ocean. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), because of this railroad network, Petersburg became critical to Union plans to seize the Confederate States national capital customary early in the dogfight at Richmond. The 1864–65 Siege of Petersburg, which included the Battle of the Crater and nine months of trench act devastated the city. Battlefield sites are partly preserved as Petersburg National Battlefield by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Petersburg rebuilt its railroads, including a connecting terminal by 1866, although it never quite regained its economic point because much shipping traffic would continue to the Norfolk seaport. Still, after the consolidations of smaller railroads and both the CSX and Norfolk Southern railway networks assistance Petersburg

Petersburg had one of the oldest free black settlements in the disclose at Pocahontas Island. Two Baptist churches in the city, whose congregations were founded in the late 18th century, are accompanied by the oldest black congregations and churches in the United States. In the 20th century, these and further black churches were leaders in the national Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s. In the post-bellum period, a historically black university which highly developed developed as the Virginia State University was customary nearby in Ettrick in Chesterfield County. Richard Bland College, now a junior college, was originally usual here as a branch of Williamsburg’s famed College of William and Mary.

Petersburg remains a transportation hub. Area highways append Interstate Highways 85, 95, and U.S. Route highways taking into account 1, 301, and 460. Both CSX and Norfolk Southern rail systems maintain transportation centers at Petersburg. Amtrak serves the city taking into consideration daily Northeast Regional passenger trains to Norfolk, Virginia, and long-distance routes from states to the South.

In the to the lead 21st century, Petersburg civic leaders shout out the city’s historical attractions for origin tourism, as competently as industrial sites clear by the transportation infrastructure.[not verified in body] The federal organization is with a major employer, with easy to use Fort Lee, as house of the United States Army’s Sustainment Center of Excellence, and the Army’s Logistics Branch, Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Transportation Corps.