In 2002, Virginia Tech decided to name the first building on campus to honor a black person, honoring two students by renaming the New Residence Hall - West as the Peddrew-Yates Building.
When Irving L. Peddrew III arrived on the Virginia Tech campus as an electrical engineering student in 1953, VPI became the first historically-white, four-year, public institution in any of the eleven states of the former Confederacy to admit a black undergraduate. Tech desegregated before any court required it.
Peddrew remained at Tech for three years. He attended schools in California before graduating from the Columbia School of Broadcasting. When he attended the dedication of the Peddrew-Yates Building in 2003, he commented:1
Charlie Yates was, as the Virginian-Pilot headline described it in 1958, "VPI's First Negro Graduate." His degree was in mechanical engineering.2
Charlie Yates never was able to sleep in a campus dorm himself, and was able to eat only one meal on campus while an undergraduate. He served in the corps of cadets and once served on guard duty in the mealroom, where he ate by himself.3
in 1950, almost everyone living west of the Blue Ridge was white; only Tazewell, Roanoke, Allegheny, and Augusta had more than 2,500 African-American residents
Source: Library of Congress, Distribution of Negro population by county 1950: showing each county with 500 or more Negro population