which became VPI's women's division; the merger was dissolved in 1964. Today, Radford University is a co-educational research university that enrolls nearly 10,000 students and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate programs.
=== Post–World War II ===
In 1953, under the leadership of President Walter Stephenson Newman, VPI became the first historically white, four-year public institution among the 11 states in the former Confederacy to admit a black undergraduate. Three more black students were admitted in 1954. At the time Virginia still enforced Jim Crow laws and largely practiced racial segregation in public and private education, churches, neighborhoods, restaurants, and movie theaters and these first black students at VPI were not allowed to live in residence halls or eat in the dining halls on campus. Instead, they boarded with African American families in Blacksburg. In 1958, Charlie L. Yates made history as the first African American to graduate from VPI. Yates earned a bachelor's degree in …
