    EXHIBIT
    FINDING
A WOMAN'S PLACE AT VIRGINIA TECH 1921-2021

EDIT PER EXHIBIT 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.

A SPACE FOR BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS—WOMEN OF COLOR AT VIRGINIA TECH

From the day I walked on campus, I knew it was my duty to enlighten and become enlightened. I hope I made a difference in race relations.

--Marguerite Laurette Harper Scott

The first women of color at Virginia Tech enrolled in the mid-1930s. Carmen Venegas, from Costa Rica, was the first international female student and woman of color to study at VT. She is also credited with being the first Latina/Hispanic woman to study at Tech. Venegas graduated from Tech in 1938 with a degree in electrical engineering.  

Carmen Venegas with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers

Black students studying in the library, 1974

Yvonne Rohran Tung, from Hong Kong, as pictured in the 1950 Bugle

Hudson, Harper and Adams, 1966

Yvonne Rohran Tung, from Hong Kong, majored in horticultural and graduated from Virginia Tech in 1950. Wallenstein (1997) described her as “a student—not male, not white, not military; not Virginian or even American—who embodied everything that the early student population of Virginia Tech was not” (p. 175). The earliest women of color to study at Virginia Tech were from Asia and the Americas.
  
The first Black women came to Virginia Tech as students in 1966. Linda Adams, Linda Edmonds, LaVerne “Freddie” Hairston, Marguerite Harper, Jackie Butler and Chiquita Hudson were the first Black co-eds on campus. Linda Edmonds was the first Black woman to graduate from VPI in 1968. 
 
When the first Black male student, Irving Peddrew III, was admitted to Tech in 1953, Black students could not live or eat on campus. By the time the first Black women  arrived, Black students were housed on campus and women could eat in traditionally male dining halls. The first Black women at Virginia Tech lived in Eggleston and Hillcrest Halls.

Linda Edmonds before the fall formal, 1966

Over the next twenty years, several important firsts occurred in the history of Black women on campus. In 1976, Cheryl Butler became the first Black woman in the Corps of Cadets and the first Black woman to serve as squadron commander. 
  
By the 1970s, Black sororities, like Alpha Kappa Alpha, formed on campus. The Virginia Tech chapter is one of over 1,000 AKA chapters at colleges and universities around the globe. Marva Felder, the first Black woman to be crowned homecoming queen, was a sister of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Butler and L Squadron, 1976-1977

Women of Alpha Kappa Alpha, 1970s

By the 1970s, Black sororities, like Alpha Kappa Alpha, formed on campus. The Virginia Tech chapter is one of over 1,000 AKA chapters at colleges and universities around the globe. Marva Felder, the first Black woman to be crowned homecoming queen, was a sister of Alpha Kappa Alpha. 