Virginia State University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Ettrick, Virginia. Founded on March 6, 1882, Virginia State developed as the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for Black Americans. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving African Americans. Most of these institutions were founded during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States. They were primarily founded by Protestant religious groups, until the Second Morill Act of 1890 required educationally segregated states to provide African American, public higher-education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits.