One-hundred-fifty years ago the Emancipation Proclamation could
not be enforced in areas still under rebellion, but as the army
took control of Confederate regions, the slaves in those regions
were emancipated rather than returned to their masters. The
Proclamation cleared the way for schools like Virginia State
University to be chartered in 1882. Panelists, during a
symposium will discuss the impact of the Emancipation
Proclamation from 1863 to 1963, on Saturday, Feb. 16, 10 a.m.-2
p.m. One member of the panel will be Lucious Edwards, PhD, who
is the archivist for VSU and teaches history at the University.
“Virginia had shares of stock in railroad companies and canals
and things like that. They had gone to borrowing money from
people in Europe because they did not have money to build these
things,” Dr. Edwards said. “The railroad right here, south of
the school, was one of the ones [railroad] that the State of
Virginia sold its interest in. And some of the money from that
sale was used to charter Virginia St