Institute, West Virginia · Founded 1891 · Yellow Jackets (mascot: Stinger)
“A Black land-grant school born on a former slave plantation in the Kanawha Valley that integrated, flipped, and kept going — the school that taught Katherine Johnson and Earl Lloyd.”
Verified live: the Marching Swarm opens its 2025 High School Band Day show, inviting high schoolers to play as honorary Swarm members — the band's recruiting engine in action.
The Swarm's pregame anthem performance at the 2025 Band Day, with full WVSU/Marching Swarm/Yellow Jacket tags from the official band channel.
The Swarm closes its November 1, 2025 video-game-with-a-spooky-twist halftime show with Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' — the band's signature one-new-show-every-home-game habit.
Mid-show cut from the same 2025 video-game show: the Swarm playing Toby Fox's 'Megalovania' — corps-style marching to gamer music at an HBCU.
The Swarm in exhibition at the Eagle's Nest Invitational band festival, closing a set of songs by female artists — part of its long tradition of exhibiting at southern West Virginia high school band festivals.
The second tune of the 2025 High School Band Day show: the Marching Swarm playing the Skyrim theme with high schoolers folded into the ranks.
Verified live: the NBA's own channel documents WVSU's Black History Month tribute to its most famous alumnus, with Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell on hand — the school's proudest basketball moment.
Short-form documentary on Earl Lloyd's 1950 NBA debut out of West Virginia State — the 30-0 Yellow Jackets years to the Washington Capitols.
Trailer for the Coodie Simmons/Chike Ozah documentary on Earl Lloyd, executive-produced by Carmelo Anthony and Kawhi Leonard — Lloyd's WVSU college years are the film's foundation.
Short profile video embedded on the Charleston visitor page: founded as the West Virginia Colored Institute, 1927 accreditation, 2004 university status — with Earl Lloyd as the marquee name.
First African American to play in an NBA game (Oct. 31, 1950, Washington Capitols); first Black NBA champion (1955 Syracuse Nationals); first Black NBA assistant coach and second Black head coach; Naismith Hall of Fame 2003. WVSU honors him with a statue, the Earl Lloyd Classic, and Earl Lloyd Way.
NASA mathematician whose calculations powered John Glenn's orbit and Apollo 11; graduated from State in 1937 at 18, summa cum laude in math and French; portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in 'Hidden Figures'; Presidential Medal of Freedom 2015; campus statue erected 2018.
Class of 1943; senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (1977–2019), famous for ordering the government to produce the Watergate wiretap transcripts. The Keith Scholars Hall dormitory is named for him.
U.S. Army major general and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for actions in Vietnam; a bust of Rogers was dedicated in the Wilson Student Union in 2016. One of fifteen general officers produced by State's ROTC.
African-American retired U.S. Army major general and State ROTC alumnus.
Class of 1936 (B.S. chemistry); the first African-American Naval Aviator in World War II and the first Black civilian flight controller.
Became the first African-American head coach in NCAA Division I history at Illinois State in 1970; later scouted for the Detroit Pistons for 28 years; member of seven athletic halls of fame.
Pioneering African-American sportswriter whose advocacy helped bring about Jackie Robinson's signing and the integration of Major League Baseball.
Journalist, pro football scout, and member of the Black College Football Hall of Fame, the Pittsburgh Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Legendary jazz tenor saxophonist of the swing era.
Jazz drummer who played with the Count Basie Orchestra; professor of music at Texas State University–San Marcos.
Jazz pianist, composer, and arranger; inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2015.
Film director of 'Training Day' (2001), 'The Equalizer,' and 'Emancipation.'
Actor ('Breaking Away,' 'Sixteen Candles,' 'Curb Your Enthusiasm') and writer.
Actor and theatrical director who played Vernon Gaines on the sitcom 'A Different World.'
First African-American elected to the Wyoming Legislature; educator and politician.
Former president of SUNY Old Westbury; the first African-American president in the SUNY system.
First African-American Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
Baptist minister, civil rights leader, longtime General Motors board member, and anti-apartheid activist; Sullivan Hall is named for him.
Civil rights activist and Freedom Rider.
NFL running back for the Washington Redskins; played college ball for the Yellow Jackets.
First football player from West Virginia State to play in the NFL — drafted in the 4th round of the 1977 NFL Draft; holds the school and WVIAC record for longest kickoff return (106 yards, 1976).
NFL linebacker/edge rusher who played for the Yellow Jackets.
Former MLB pitcher for the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres.
Former member of the West Virginia Senate.
Former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates (2018–2024).
On March 17, 1891, the West Virginia Legislature passed a bill creating the West Virginia Colored Institute under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which funded land-grant colleges for Black students in the seventeen states that kept segregated schools. Federal funds provided $3,000 for faculty salaries and the legislature appropriated $10,000 to buy land and put up a building. The school opened its doors in May 1892 with just over 40 students and a faculty of three: principal James Edwin Campbell, Byrd Prillerman, and T.C. Friend. Early courses were in agriculture, horticulture, mechanical arts, and domestic science — trade school first, by law and by design.
The campus sits on land with a tangled past. It was once occupied by mound-builder Native Americans, then granted by the British crown to George Washington for his service in the French and Indian War, and later worked as a plantation with enslaved labor. Samuel I. Cabell, who bought the property in 1853, married Mary Barnes — a woman he had held enslaved — and took elaborate legal steps to emancipate her and their thirteen children in 1858 so they could not be sold. Sam Cabell was murdered shortly after the Civil War. Decades later his daughter Maria Cabell-Hurt sold some of the land to the new state so Black children in the Kanawha Valley would not have to cross the Ohio River into Ohio for an education. Sam, Mary, and their children are buried on campus, and some descendants still live nearby.
Just a year after opening, the Institute added teacher education ('normal') courses to the curriculum, and they became an instant draw. The trades instruction the state had imagined for the school was quickly overtaken by demand for academic and teacher-preparation programs. Military education also became baked into campus life — in 1899 the legislature passed a bill admitting up to 60 cadets — and compulsory religious services, manual labor, and military-style discipline shaped the early student experience. That military thread would eventually run straight into the school's ROTC program and its long roll of general officers.
Booker T. Washington, who had been instrumental in getting the Institute located in the Kanawha Valley and had spoken at its first commencement, personally recommended his friend Byrd Prillerman for the presidency in 1909. Prillerman was a faculty member and one of the people responsible for landing the school in the valley. During his ten-year administration he expanded academic offerings and made graduation requirements more rigorous. Under Prillerman, the school established itself as the center of Black intellectual life in the state of West Virginia.
For its first twenty-four years the school had provided the equivalent of a high school education. In 1915 the legislature renamed it the West Virginia Collegiate Institute and authorized it to grant college degrees — the moment it became a true college. That legislative act set the trajectory: from vocational institute to degree-granting institution. The school's enrollment and ambition grew through the 1910s alongside the name change.
In 1919, Morehouse graduate John Warren Davis became the fifth president, and he served for an extraordinary thirty-four years, the longest tenure in school history. Davis set out to recruit the most highly qualified Black faculty he could find and to sharpen the curriculum. His signature hire was persuading the noted historian Carter G. Woodson — founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the father of Black History Month — to serve as academic dean, which Woodson did from 1920 to 1922. Davis's decades built the academic foundation everything later rested on.
In 1927, under Davis, the school was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools — the first of the seventeen original Black land-grant schools to earn regional accreditation, one of only four Black colleges in the country to hold it, and the first public college in West Virginia to be accredited by North Central. That certification put State in a league of its own among Black public colleges. A new administration building with auditorium, classrooms, library, and laboratories had already been completed in 1925 (now Ferrell Hall), signaling the school's arrival as a serious institution.
In 1929 the school took the name West Virginia State College, the name it would carry for the next seventy-five years. Enrollment had reached about 1,000 students, and the college was organized into divisions of Applied Arts and Sciences; Languages, Literature and Fine Arts; Natural Sciences and Mathematics; and Social Sciences and Philosophy. The 'State' name stuck hard — to this day students and alumni call it simply 'State.'
Black high schools in West Virginia were barred from competing in the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission, so from 1932 to 1959 the college sponsored an unofficial 'state colored championship' for Black high school teams. It was a classic State move: when the state's own athletic machinery shut Black kids out, the Black college built the machinery itself. The championships ran for nearly three decades, through the height of the segregation era.
Katherine Coleman — later Katherine Johnson — finished high school on the West Virginia State campus at age 14 (her family had moved to Institute so she could attend) and graduated from State in 1937 at eighteen, summa cum laude, with a double major in mathematics and French. Her mentor was W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, reportedly the third African American to earn a doctorate in mathematics, who pushed her from teaching toward research math. Two years later, State's president selected her as one of three Black students to integrate West Virginia University's graduate school; she became the first African-American woman accepted into WVU's graduate program, though she withdrew after discovering she was pregnant. She went on to NASA, the Apollo program, and the film Hidden Figures. In 2018 the school erected a statue of her on campus next to the Cole Complex and established a scholarship in her honor.
In 1939 West Virginia State College became the first of six historically Black colleges authorized by the Civil Aeronautics Authority to establish an aviation program. With Wertz Field airport sitting adjacent to campus, the program prepared many African-American pilots for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Several State aviators went on to join the famed 99th Fighter Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group — the Tuskegee Airmen — who served with distinction in the European Theater. One of the program's original graduates, Rose Agnes Rolls Cousins, became the first African-American woman to solo as a pilot in the Civilian Pilot Training Program.
In 1942 LTC Payton Winlock established a Senior ROTC unit at the college to provide instruction in field artillery; by 1956 it became a general military science program, and in 1970 military science became elective rather than mandatory for all male students. During World War II the school was also one of 131 colleges nationally to take part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission. The ROTC tradition stuck: the school claims fifteen general officers among its graduates, including Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Major General Charles C. Rogers and Major General Harvey D. Williams.
The late 1940s were State's athletic glory years in the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). The 1948 football team won the CIAA championship, and the 1948 basketball team was the only undefeated team in the nation. Willie 'Suitcase' Smith lettered in both sports, was named All-American by the Pittsburgh Courier, and played on the 1948 title team, the 1949 undefeated team, and the 1951 CIAA championship team. Linwood 'BabyBoy' Greene, a freshman quarterback, tossed a 99-yard touchdown pass in the final minute to topple undefeated Virginia State College and earn CIAA and Pittsburgh Courier All-American honors. This was the Black-college powerhouse era, and State sat at its center.
Earl Francis Lloyd, a West Virginia State star from 1947 to 1950, was drafted by the Washington Capitols and took the court on October 31, 1950 — the first African American to play in an NBA game. At State he had led the Yellow Jackets to two conference and tournament championships, earned All-Conference three years, and was a two-time All-American as named by the Pittsburgh Courier. He later became the first Black player to win an NBA championship (with the 1955 Syracuse Nationals), the NBA's first Black assistant coach (Detroit Pistons, 1968), and its second Black head coach (1971). Inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003, Lloyd died in 2015. State honors him with a statue in the Walker Convocation Center, the season-opening Earl Lloyd Classic, and in 2018 the street in front of the convocation center was renamed Earl Lloyd Way. His life is the subject of the documentary 'The First To Do It.'
In 1951 the Drain-Jordan Library opened, named in honor of librarian Leaonead Pack Drain-Bailey and Lawrence Victor Jordan. Drain-Bailey, a State alumna, was a pioneering librarian whose name still anchors the campus's academic life. The library would later house exhibits on the university's history, including during the 125th anniversary celebrations. It remains one of the campus's signature buildings.
The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, combined with the G.I. Bill, transformed West Virginia State from a small Black college into a racially integrated — and soon predominantly white — institution. President William J. L. Wallace steered the school through it, calling the transition 'a tribute to the character and courage of the people of Kanawha Valley,' and the school adopted the motto 'A Living Laboratory of Human Relations.' Enrollment surged as white students enrolled in large numbers. Today the school remains committed to its HBCU history and identity even as its student body reflects the valley around it.
In 1957 the West Virginia Board of Education voted to end the state funding needed to draw down matching federal land-grant aid — and West Virginia State lost its land-grant status. Federal land-grant money requires matching state funds, so the board's vote effectively killed the designation. State was the only institution in the country to have the status removed, which meant there was no precedent and no roadmap for getting it back. The loss would stand for more than four decades.
Shortly after becoming president in September 1987, Dr. Hazo W. Carter Jr. launched what became a twelve-year quest to restore the land-grant designation nobody had ever recovered. The first step came when Governor Gaston Caperton signed a state-recognition bill on February 12, 1991; the finish came in 2001 when the U.S. Congress, with the advocacy of alumni and West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd, fully restored federal 1890 land-grant status. State was once again a recognized 1890 land-grant institution, with funding for teaching, research, and public service — and the land-grant institute is now named the Gus R. Douglass Land-Grant Institute.
In 2004, under President Carter, West Virginia State College gained university status and became West Virginia State University, making Carter the first president to serve under the 'university' name. The school began offering graduate degrees in Biotechnology and Media Studies, later adding Law Enforcement (2011) and Education (2014). In 2003 its community college arm had been separately accredited as the West Virginia State Community and Technical College; the legislature fully separated it in 2008, and it eventually moved to South Charleston as Kanawha Valley Community and Technical College in 2012. Carter retired June 30, 2012 — after a faculty no-confidence vote in August 2011 — became president emeritus, and died in February 2014.
Dr. Brian O. Hemphill, the tenth president, took office July 1, 2012 after serving as vice president for student affairs at Northern Illinois University, and set a goal of making State the most student-centered land-grant research and teaching university in West Virginia. His era saw major infrastructure come online, including the D. Stephen and Diane H. Walker Convocation Center and the Judge Damon J. Keith Scholars Hall. Hemphill left in 2016 to head Radford University. His successor Anthony L. Jenkins (2016–2020) expanded outreach to all 55 West Virginia counties, added Engineering and Nursing programs, and secured the school's full land-grant state match — then left to head Coppin State University.
Two anchor projects opened in 2014. The Judge Damon J. Keith Scholars Hall — a 291-bed, $20 million residence hall on the main lawn — was the first new housing built on campus since 1969, named for the 1943 alumnus who became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and ordered the government to produce the Watergate wiretap transcripts. The D. Stephen and Diane H. Walker Convocation Center, an addition and renovation to Fleming Hall, became the home of Yellow Jacket basketball and volleyball and the school's new commencement venue; the Spring 2014 commencement was the first held there. The Gregory V. Monroe Athletic Complex, a $3.5 million facility next to Lakin Field at Dickerson Stadium, followed in 2015.
In 2018 the school erected a statue of Katherine Johnson next to the Cole Complex with a scholarship in her honor, and Earl Lloyd Way was dedicated in front of the Walker Convocation Center. The Yellow Jacket Marching Band — the 'Marching Swarm' — performed in Welch's 100th Veterans Day Parade, the longest-running Veterans Day parade in the nation, and the band's exhibition schedule stretched from high school band festivals across southern West Virginia to the 2008 Chicago Football Classic Battle of the Bands with the football team. The band's corps-style marching — rare among HBCU bands, which mostly high-step — became its signature look.
Dr. Nicole Pride became the twelfth president — and the first woman to hold the office — on September 1, 2020. Her tenure lasted less than a year: her cabinet called for her termination over allegations of a hostile work environment, a faculty 'no confidence' vote followed, and the Board of Governors unanimously accepted her resignation on July 30, 2021. R. Charles Byers served as acting president through the fall while the board searched for a permanent leader.
The 2021 Homecoming — the first since 2019 — drew more than 2,300 fans to a Saturday night football game played on newly installed artificial turf under new lights, funded in part by a $1.28 million pledge from NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier's Honey Bear Project through its HBCU Field of Dreams program. The weekend also marked the 100th anniversary of the Alpha Zeta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, chartered on campus in 1921; the brothers celebrated by donating $125,000 for student scholarships. The $2 million stadium upgrade package — turf, lights, new bleachers — also drew support from the Jacobson Foundation and the Kanawha County Commission.
After serving as interim, Ericke S. Cage officially became the 13th president on March 31, 2022. His administration has pushed campus growth forward: a $250,000 grant from the Kanawha County Commission for a new track and field complex, plans for a downtown Charleston center, and continued investment in the student experience. Cage leads a school that is still, as its own materials put it, a living laboratory — a Black land-grant university in the Kanawha Valley whose most famous graduates broke the NBA's color line and helped put men on the moon.
The crosstown rival eight miles apart: State in Institute, the University of Charleston in the capital city. Both NCAA Division II Mountain East Conference programs, and their facilities arms race played out side by side in the mid-2010s — State's Walker Convocation Center and Monroe Complex against UC's Wehrle Innovation Center. WVSU's own materials name Charleston as a main rival.
The HBCU-on-HBCU rivalry played on neutral showcase stages. State beat Central State's Marauders at Soldier Field in the 2008 Chicago Football Classic, and the two have met in the Dayton Classic as well. The 2008 Chicago trip also brought the Marching Swarm along for the Battle of the Bands — the band's only competition appearance. WVSU names Central State among its main rivals.
A fellow HBCU and former conference foe across the state line, named by the school among its main rivals. The matchup carries the old Black-college circuit energy from the CIAA days into the modern Division II schedule.
🥁 Yellow Jacket Marching Band ("Marching Swarm")
The Marching Swarm is one of the rare HBCU marching bands that works corps-style rather than show-style high-stepping, a distinction it has held since the Chris Card era. It performs in the WVSU Homecoming Parade, played for Welch's 100th Veterans Day Parade (the longest-running Veterans Day parade in the nation) in 2018, and traveled with the football team to the 2008 Chicago Football Classic for the only Battle of the Bands competition in its history. The Wind Ensemble plays commencement ceremonies, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble played at The Hamilton in Washington, D.C. for Emancipation Day events in 2015, and the Jazz Ensemble has toured Austria (2007) and played D.C.'s Emancipation Day celebrations. The university runs an official YouTube channel for its bands with recent halftime-show footage.
Led a mid-1990s resurgence; the band held 35–50 members, many on scholarship, with 5–10 veterans or active members of Drum Corps International, known for its small size and huge sound. Marched corps-style — heel-toe, horns to the press box — which was unusual among HBCU bands at the time.
Took over as Director of Bands with only 7 students enrolled and grew enrollment by over 800% — the Marching Swarm era. Later served as Music Department chair and was named Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities (interim from August 2013). A new halftime show at nearly every home football game, except homecoming, was the house rule under his direction.
Listed as Band Director in the university catalog; oversees the Marching Band, Jazz Ensemble, and Wind Ensemble, which are open to students from all majors. (Exact start year unverified; reported as current.)
West Virginia State holds one of the oldest Divine Nine lineups anywhere: four of its chapters were chartered in the 1920s — Alpha Zeta Alphas (1921), Nu AKAs (1922), Tau Kappas (1923), and Theta Psi Ques (1926) — followed by Alpha Theta Sigmas and Iota Beta Zetas (both 1948) and the Iota colony (2006). The campus is a historic cradle of Black Greek life in West Virginia: Nu was the first undergraduate Greek-letter sorority in the state for Negro college women. Homecoming is Greek central — a step show with all Greek organizations represented, a Greek Unity Picnic on the student plaza (hosted by the AKA Nu chapter for its own 100th anniversary in 2022), and the Alpha Zeta centennial's $125,000 scholarship gift in 2021.
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A new administration building with auditorium, classrooms, library, and laboratories was completed in 1925 under President Davis, giving the young college a real academic home. It now houses the P.A. Williams Auditorium (renamed from the Ferrell Hall auditorium era), which hosted commencement ceremonies before the convocation center opened.
The library named for pioneering librarian Leaonead Pack Drain-Bailey and Lawrence Victor Jordan opened in 1951 and became the academic heart of campus, later housing exhibits on the school's history including its 125th anniversary display.
Two of the oldest campus structures — East Hall and the Canty House, home of 'Colonel' James M. Canty — were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The Canty House is now the site of the 'W' Club bell-ringing ceremony during Homecoming.
The first new residence hall built on campus since 1969: a 291-bed, $20 million, four-story suite-style hall on the main lawn with a 150-seat multi-purpose room, café, and gaming lounge, opened in fall 2014. Named for 1943 alumnus and Sixth Circuit Judge Damon J. Keith, famous for ordering the government to produce the Watergate wiretap transcripts.
An addition and renovation to Fleming Hall that became the home of Yellow Jacket basketball and volleyball and the school's commencement venue — the Spring 2014 commencement was the first held there. The basketball court sits in the Earl Lloyd lobby area, and the street in front was renamed Earl Lloyd Way in 2018.
A $3.5 million, two-story, 15,691-square-foot facility next to Lakin Field at Dickerson Stadium with meeting rooms, weight room, training room, and locker room. Named for 1980 graduate and former Yellow Jacket football player Gregory V. Monroe, who made a significant contribution to fund it.
A statue of Katherine Johnson was erected next to the Cole Complex with a scholarship established in her honor, and the street in front of the Walker Convocation Center was renamed Earl Lloyd Way. A bust of Medal of Honor recipient Major General Charles C. Rogers was dedicated in the Wilson Student Union in 2016.
Lakin-Ray Field at Dickerson Stadium got artificial turf, lights, and new bleachers in a nearly $2 million upgrade. NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier's Honey Bear Project pledged $1.28 million through its HBCU Field of Dreams program, joined by the Jacobson Foundation and the Kanawha County Commission. The first game under the lights drew 2,300 fans at the 2021 Homecoming.
The former West Virginia Rehabilitation Center was converted and renamed as the Dr. Hazo W. Carter Jr. Integrated Research and Extension Building (IREB), with the adjacent Dr. Hazo W. and Judge Phyllis H. Carter Food and Agricultural Complex, honoring the president who restored the land-grant and won university status. The formal renaming dedication was held during Homecoming 2022.
The Kanawha County Commission approved a $250,000 grant from American Rescue Plan funds to build a new track and field complex on campus, intended to serve both WVSU student-athletes and local middle and high school students in the Kanawha Valley.
The university announced plans to open a new WVSU center in downtown Charleston, with interior renovation work to follow — pitched by President Cage as 'the next evolution of the West Virginia State University story' and a bridge between the Institute campus and the capital city.
Notable figures on the faculty side include Carter G. Woodson, who served as academic dean 1920–1922 before founding what became Black History Month, and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the mathematician who mentored Katherine Johnson. The coaching lineage runs through Mark H. Cardwell, whose first year as football coach was 1945 — the Mark Cardwell Court name at Fleming Hall and the 1948 CIAA title trace to his era. Ferrell Hall, the Drain-Jordan Library, and the ROTC Yellow Jacket Battalion round out the institutional spine.
Named president March 31, 2022 after serving as interim; previously announced unanimously by the Board of Governors.
Quoted as AD on the $2 million stadium upgrade announcement; oversees the NCAA Division II Yellow Jackets program in the Mountain East Conference.
Named in a 2023 spring-game announcement as head coach; Jon Anderson was the 13th head coach (2012–2022) before him. Current status unverified beyond 2023.
Named dean after serving as Music Department chair and Director of Bands; with the university since 2006.
State's campus life runs on school pride and the yard: students who stay on campus tend to congregate at the James C. Wilson Student Union, and Homecoming is the year's gravitational center, pulling alumni back from across the country. The student body is majority white and heavily Pell-eligible, a living echo of the 1954 desegregation that made State 'a living laboratory of human relations.' Black history is honored out loud — Earl Lloyd Way, the Johnson statue, the Alpha Zeta centennial — while the Marching Swarm and the D9 Greeks carry the HBCU cultural current.