Christopher Newport University

was dedicated as Christopher Newport Hall.
The site chosen was very controversial. Since at least the early 1900s, it had been home to an African-American community that had, over time, prospered and grown more middle-class. In the 1950s and 1960s, white city leaders used eminent domain to seize stable Black neighborhoods for whites-only schools three times. As a local Black surgeon wrote to the local Daily Press newspaper: "Does it not seem more than coincidental that, with the hundreds of undeveloped acres in the city, the sites recently chosen by the city for condemnation are sites owned by Negroes?"
The future site of CNC, known as Shoe Lane, was located adjacent to the whites-only James River Country Club, whose members included much of the city's powerful elite. At a council hearing on the proposed site, civil rights attorney W. Hale Thompson testified that the city's goal "was to eliminate the possibility of Negroes building homes in that area." University president Anthony Santoro later called the choice …