As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, universities across the country are reexamining the histories beneath their campuses. Today, the town of Blacksburg is known almost entirely through the lens of Virginia Tech. Football Saturdays, engineering labs, and the rhythms of a college town define its public identity. But long before the Hokies arrived, a different community helped build the foundations of Blacksburg.
The story of Blacksburg is often told through the growth of the university, yet the town’s earliest labor force, neighborhoods, and institutions were shaped by enslaved people and their descendants. Their work cleared the land, built farms and roads, and later sustained the town through Reconstruction and segregation.
Before Blacksburg became a college town, it was a plantation landscape. Just outside the modern campus stands Smithfield Plantation, constructed in the 1770s by Revolutionary War officer William Preston. Like most plantations in Virginia, Smithfield depended on enslaved African Americans.
Enslaved men and women farmed wheat, tobacco and livestock while also performing skilled trades such as blacksmithing, carpentry and masonry. Their labor built the agricultural economy that supported early settlement in Montgomery County. Plantations like Smithfield were not isolated estates. They were economic centers that shaped the surrounding region, creating the rural infrastructure that towns like Blacksburg eventually grew around.
After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people began building independent communities throughout the New River Valley. In Blacksburg, a neighborhood known as New Town emerged near the center of town. New Town became the heart of Black life in Blacksburg during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Families established homes, churches and small businesses despite the limitations imposed by segregation.
One of the most important institutions to emerge from this community was St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall, built in 1905. The building served as a meeting place for fraternal organizations such as the Independent Order of St. Luke and the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. During segregation, it was one of the few spaces where Black residents could gather freely for social events, civic meetings, and mutual aid activities.
For African Americans in southwest Virginia, education was both a necessity and a challenge. Segregation meant that many Black students could not attend local white schools.
One of the most significant institutions addressing this gap was the Christiansburg Industrial Institute, founded in 1866 in nearby Christiansburg. The school became one of the most important Black educational centers in the region.
Students traveled from across southwest Virginia to attend the institute, which provided academic and vocational training during a period when educational opportunities for African Americans were severely limited. The school operated for a century before closing in 1966 following the integration of public schools.
In 1872, Virginia established the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the land grant institution that would later become Virginia Tech. The new college transformed Blacksburg into a university town, but it did not erase the existing Black community. For decades, African Americans in Blacksburg continued to build lives alongside the expanding campus while navigating the realities of segregation.
The university itself remained closed to Black undergraduates until 1953, when Irving L. Peddrew III became the first African American student admitted. Even then, segregation persisted. Peddrew was not allowed to live in campus dormitories and had to reside off campus.
His experience marked the beginning of the university’s gradual integration during the civil rights era.
Today, visitors often encounter Blacksburg primarily through the university. Yet the deeper history of the town includes the enslaved people who shaped the region’s early economy, the freed families who built New Town, and the institutions that sustained Black life during segregation. Their contributions helped build the foundations of Blacksburg long before the roar of a football crowd filled Lane Stadium.
Remembering these communities does not compete with the story of Virginia Tech. It completes it. Because before the Hokies, there were communities whose labor, resilience, and institutions helped build the town that the university now calls home.
Jeff Bennett is the author of “The Black Belt of Virginia: Untold Stories of African American History,” and will appear at Blacksburg Books on Mar. 28 for a book signing event.
