Virginia State University was chartered by the Virginia legislature in 1882 as the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. Delegate Alfred W. Harris, an African American attorney in Petersburg, championed the charter and supported it through lawsuits that tried to stop the institution from existing. It was the country's first school for African Americans authorized by charter to grant a college degree, to have an African American board of visitors, and to have an all-African American faculty. A year and a half after its charter, the school was built and opened. In 1902 its college program was abolished and its name changed to the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, then college courses were restored in 1922. In 1930 it became the Virginia State College for Negroes, and in 1946 it became Virginia State University. Its first president, John Mercer Langston, later became in 1888 the only Black Virginian elected to serve in the U.S. Congress until 1992. In its first year, the university had 126 students and 7 faculty members, all Black. By 1982, one hundred years after its charter, it had a fully integrated student body of nearly 5,000, an integrated full-time faculty of 250, and more than 50 buildings, up from 1.