The City Council agreed this week to create a commission to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of Massive Resistance and to honor the 17 black students who first integrated Norfolk’s schools.
Former Mayor Joseph A. Leafe and former Vice Mayor Joseph N. Green Jr. will lead the group’s efforts. A celebration of the anniversary will be held next January and February.
State officials ordered the closing of Norfolk’s school system, then the state’s largest, rather than allow them to be integrated. Opposition became known as Massive Resistance. The schools reopened in 1959 after courts ruled closing them was illegal. The first black students who enrolled in previously all-white schools became known as the Norfolk 17.
Commission board members include Brenda Andrews, publisher of the New Journal and Guide; Barry Bishop, chairman of the Norfolk School Board; Louis Guy, president of the Norfolk Historical Society; Tommy L. Bogger, Norfolk State University professor; and Ken Whitley, a Norview High School alumnus and long-time coach.
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Public schools were really changed because of this...
Awesome
I'm looking forward to see what the commission comes up with to commemorate this historic event, & to honor the 17 participants involved. I hope its presented publicly as a..play....re-enactment..something of that nature, maybe documented by PBS. Even though I was just being born in 1959, I did grow up here. I would not have wanted to be in the "shoes" of the Norfolk 17. They have my admiration, & are certainly due public recognition for their participation in this historic event.
How much is this going to cost
the already financially struggling city and the taxpayers?