Willie Harris

Virginia State University is a historically black and land-grant university located north of the Appomattox River in Ettrick, Chesterfield County, in the Richmond area. Founded on March 6, 1882 , Virginia State was 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. Following the American Civil War, William Mahone of Petersburg, Virginia was the driving force in the linkage of Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, South Side Railroad and the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad in 1870 to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad , a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when the AM&O was sold at auction to form the Norfolk and Western Railway. Mahone, a former Confederate general best known as the hero of the Battle of the Crater, later led Virginia's Readjuster Party and was a major proponent of public schools for the education of the former slaves and free blacks.
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Cairo /ˈkeɪ.roʊ/ is a city in Grady County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 9,607. The city is the county seat of Grady County. Although Cairo is nicknamed the "Syrup City" it has no relationship with the Karo brand of syrup, which is... pronounced like the city's name. Rather, Cairo earned its nickname by producing cane syrup from the early 1900s through the late 1990s. Of the several companies that produced cane syrup, Roddenbery's was the best known. Reflecting this "syrup" heritage, the Cairo High School football team is nicknamed the Syrupmakers, and the school mascot is the agriculturally based sugar cane farmer/syrupmaker similar to the Cornhusker and Boilermaker. According to local tradition, this began during a rainy football game, when the players wore donated ponchos with "Roddenbery Syrup" printed on them. The most widely accepted tradition and the one with the most supportive evidence claims that a newspaper reporter referred to the Cairo Tigers in print as "the syrupmakers from Cairo." The school's female athletic teams are named "Syrup Maids," often shortened to "Maids," while the male athletes are often dubbed "Makers.
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