In this exhibit you can explore the different phases of Solitude’s history. We begin during the period when this place was indigenous land, and go on to explore its history as a slave plantation in the nineteenth century.
BARRIERS OF ENTRY INTO WHITE CAMPUS
With the admission of Irving Peddrew III in 1953, Virginia Tech became the first historically white public four-year college in the former confederacy to admit a black undergraduate student. However, rather than admitted as a normal student, Peddrew was admitted under the distinction of “day military student”, meaning he was barred from living and eating on campus, as well as participation in the majority of campus events and activities.
Ring Dance, one of the most historic traditions and memorable nights for many undergraduates, was one such event that Irving Peddrew was barred from attending. After planning on attending the dance with his girlfriend, Peddrew received pressure from both administration and the student body not to attend. Students circulated rumors that Longwood and Radford- two local women’s schools- would not allow their students to attend Ring Dance if Peddrew did. The YMCA, which Peddrew commends for the support they offered him while at Virginia Tech, also made efforts to dissuade Peddrew from attending after receiving pressure to do so from the administration. Although the rumors proved untrue, Peddrew decided not to attend Ring Dance, and published a letter in the student newspaper explaining his decision. In an interview conducted in 2002, Peddrew recalls his decision not to attend:
Floyd Wilson, Irving Peddrew III, and Charlie Yates in their cadet uniforms, 1955
Photo from Virginia Tech's first Ring Dance in 1934
Irving Peddrew, 1953. An oral history with Peddrew can be found here
Peddrew's letter explaining his decision not to attend Ring Dance, 1956.
“ I wanted to go so badly. My girlfriend was willing...but I was talked out of it by YMCA, who thought that it was probably not the time to do it...I allowed them to convince me that that was not a prudent move at this particular juncture, although I thought that I should've gone. I still think that to this day…There was a chance of troubles or problems or difficulties as there would be in any situation like that at that time. This was 1956. Things weren't that warm for me here, not on the campus as much as in the town of Blacksburg. I knew that I had my place...Although, things I think were better here than in a lot of places in the south, I still knew there were places I couldn't go, and there were things I couldn't attend.”
In addition to being the first Black student to attend Ring Dance, Whitehurst also became the first Black person to serve on Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors in 1970
The following year, black students were invited by their class officers to attend Ring Dance. However, despite the wishes of elected student leaders, President Newman held a meeting with Charlie Yates and Lindsay Cherry to express his desire that they not attend. The next year in 1958, Matt Winston had a similar experience with President Newman who, again, persuaded Winston not to attend Ring Dance as to avoid the potential for the “great harm” it may have caused. It would not be until 1962, when the Commonwealth Attorney for Montgomery County filed an injunction on James Whitehurst’s behalf, that a black student would be permitted to attend Ring Dance. Although he and his date had to attend Ring Dance with the Dean of Students and his wife, as well as sit apart from everyone else on the balcony, when Whitehurst and his date took the dance floor for the first time, the students paused to watch them and erupted in applause.
Marguerite Harper Scott, 1970 Bugle. An oral history with Scott can be found here
Essex Finney with Mr. and Mrs. Hoge at their home after his graduation, 1959. Click image for an oral history with Finney.
In addition to being the first black student to attend Ring Dance, Whitehurst also succeeded in pressuring administration into allowing black students to live and eat on campus. However, the integration of dining facilities did not amount to significant levels of actual social integration. Jackie Blackwell (‘70) recalls the dining experience her first year on campus in 1966,
“When we would go to the cafeteria, and we had our trays, and we had to pick a table to eat. Sometimes when we sat at the table, the students at the table would get up and move to another table.”
Contributing to the effort to keep black and white students in separate social spheres, a letter was rumored to have been sent out by the Dean of Women to white female students in the late 60s, specifying that they would only be allowed to date interracially if they had a written and signed letter of support from their parents. Taking obvious offense, Marguerite Harper Scott (‘70) worked with the Human Relations Council to stage an interracial date at a concert, in full view of faculty and alunmi.
When I found out that white girls were told they had to have letters from home saying it was all right for them to date interracially...But I had not been told that I had to have a letter to do the same thing. Again, what's that saying about me and my womanhood?”
“The Human Relations Council decided we would do an in your face kind of thing, and so we were going to have an interracial date set up to occur at a time when you have lots of alumni here for those reunions and what have you...We had tickets for this concert, and we sat on the faculty/alumni side. We didn't sit in the student section. We wanted the old people to see us, very specifically.”
While these overt acts of discrimination are quite telling, they alone cannot paint the full picture of the obstalces Black students faced in their efforts to make Virginia Tech home. For Black students, it was a constant struggle between invisibility and hypervisibility, inclusion and exclusion.
