RADFORD -- As Radford University celebrates its 100th birthday over the next year, the contributions of black people won't be forgotten, President Penelope Kyle has promised.

The university plans to pursue recognition through the Virginia Department of Historical Resources for the on-campus site of one the area's oldest black congregations, known in 1871 as Lovely Mount and today called First Baptist Church, Kyle said.

Whether or not the site receives state recognition, a permanent marker will be placed at the site, on which Peters Hall now sits, she said.

"My church was there before the shovel hit the ground," church historian and Radford native Sarah Carter said.

Carter traces her family roots back to slavery in Radford, which was then part of Montgomery County, she said. But some of her ancestors were freed before the Civil War.

Carter is part of the university's nine-member African-American Heritage Task Force -- one of several such committees busy researching the university's history and devising events to celebrate its Centennial.

The university, a former teacher's college and Virginia Tech women's auxiliary campus, was founded in 1910.

The task force has found evidence that some minorities, including American Indians and Filipinos, could attend classes there before desegregation. But classroom doors remained closed to blacks until desegregation, Carter said.

The Lovely Mount congregation traces its history to 1871, when meetings were held in the old Henry Mitchell storehouse in south Radford, according to the task force research.

It moved to Fairfax Street in 1897 and was then known as First Baptist Church.

The university purchased that land in 1961 and razed First Baptist's old building -- built between 1891 and 1893 -- to make way for Peters Hall.

Named after Radford's second president, David Wilbur Peters, Peters Hall was built as a physical education facility. Today it houses the College of Education and Human Development, the Department of Dance and the Teaching Resources Center, as well as a fitness center.

Radford officials oversaw the construction of a new church on West Street, where the congregation still worships, Carter said.

The task force also plans to find ways to celebrate the lives and contributions of the university's black workers and alumni.

"In every bit of American history, slavery existed and blacks existed," Carter said.

First Baptist Church celebrated its 138th anniversary Nov. 15.

Plans are being made for a new church building on Rock Road -- in the same part of the city where the congregation first formed.

"We're going back home," Carter said.