Two members of the Norfolk 17, who went on to earn master’s degrees at ODU, recall their role in history 50 years ago.

By James Sweeney

Feb. 2, 2009, will mark the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of the Norfolk Public Schools. It was fully five decades ago when 17 young African Americans displayed both courage and dignity as they overcame the hostility of whites to carry out the mandate of the U.S. Supreme Court to wipe out segregation in public education.

Old Dominion University counts two of the Norfolk 17 among its alumni: Delores Johnson Brown (M.S.Ed. ’75) and Patricia Turner (M.S.Ed. ’97).

Brown and Turner’s experiences debunk the myth found in many accounts that Norfolk took desegregation in stride. Both were subjected to continuing abuse, which is difficult for today’s students to comprehend. And while the painful memories of those days 50 years ago are still with them, so, too, is the pride they feel from the roles they played in desegregating the Norfolk schools.

Although both women grew up in a racially segregated community in Norfolk, Brown experienced a different world at times in her youth. Because her stepfather was in the Navy, she had access to the Norfolk Naval Operating Base, which was desegregated. At the beginning of her sophomore year of high school, her mother sent her to West Orange, N.J., to assist her married sister with childcare. As one of four African Americans at West Orange High School, she recalls being “treated royally” and even having a close friend who was white.

Her “vacation” from segregation came to an end after four months when her mother sustained burns on her hands from a kitchen accident. Brown reluctantly returned home and back to Norfolk’s all-black Booker T. Washington High School, with its inferior physical plant and outdated instructional materials. Soon after her return, the NAACP came to her home to ask her mother if she might be interested in joining the lawsuit to desegregate the Norfolk schools – part of its attempt to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Mrs. Johnson replied, “It’s up to her [Delores]. If she wants to do it, fine. Otherwise, I won’t force her.” Brown recalls that she “welcomed the idea of being one of the students to integrate the schools in Norfolk.” However, she conceded, “I had no idea what I was in for.”

Pat Turner also remembers a childhood of “living in two different worlds.” Since her father served in the Navy’s submarine service, she also visited the base “where everyone joined together.” The NAACP did not approach her parents about joining the suit. Her mother took the initiative for very practical reasons. Both Brown and Turner lived in the Norview area of the city, which meant that they had to take two buses to their respective black schools. Turner’s mother did not drive. Having to put four children on city buses, she found transportation expenses to be burdensome. When her mother submitted her application for transfer from Ruffner Junior High School to Norview Junior High, Turner, who was then 13, “felt relief. I didn’t have to catch those two buses. I could walk to school. I wasn’t thinking about all those other things that came with it [desegregation].”

In August 1958, the Norfolk School Board rejected the applications of 151 black students to attend the city’s white schools. In addition to undergoing academic and psychological testing, the students were interviewed by a panel that included school board members and a psychiatrist. Turner’s recollection of that experience is vivid to this day. Sitting at a small table facing a group of “big white men with suits on” was intimidating, she said. Her application was rejected on two grounds: Her reading skills were deemed insufficient, although she was reading on the high school level, and she was said to be suffering from a nervous condition. Her evaluators did not seem to realize that facing them was a nerve-wracking experience.

Federal Judge Walter Hoffman would soon rule that the Norfolk School Board must reconsider the students’ applications. After review, the board selected 17 of the students to be admitted to the white schools. The 16-year-old Delores Johnson would be entering her junior year at Norview High School, while Pat Turner would begin the eighth grade at Norview Junior High. But there were complications. In 1956, the Virginia General Assembly had passed the so-called Massive Resistance laws, which included a statute mandating that any public school under court order to desegregate must close. After Norfolk’s appeal of Judge Hoffman’s ruling was rejected by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond Jr. issued orders to close the six schools in Norfolk affected by the desegregation decree. Nearly 10,000 white students were displaced. The schools remained closed for four months as litigation to test the constitutionality of the Massive Resistance laws went forward in the courts.

The school closures placed the Norfolk 17 in a precarious situation. Although the black schools remained open, the NAACP advised the students not to attend because the court had ordered their admission to the white schools. Local civil rights activist Vivian Carter Mason organized a special school for the 17 students at First Baptist Church on Bute Street in downtown Norfolk. The volunteer teachers were well qualified, and the instruction was intense. The NAACP wanted to be sure that the students would be ready academically when the schools reopened. The students were also counseled on how to respond to taunts they might experience and to questions from the media. As Brown recalls, “They had trained us to say ‘no comment’ and keep walking. We were trained not to be violent in any way and just remember we are going there for an education.”

On Jan. 19, 1959, both the Virginia Supreme Court and a three-judge federal court struck down the Massive Resistance laws. The Norfolk School Board set Monday, Feb. 2, as the date when the schools would reopen and the 17 black students would be admitted to the formerly all-white schools.

For the Norfolk 17, Feb. 2, 1959, was a day they will never forget. Four of the students were the only blacks at their respective schools. Brown was one of seven African American students at Norview High School, while Turner was among a group of five, which included her brother, the late James Turner Jr., at Norview Junior High School. The NAACP provided transportation to the high school, but, as Turner puts it, “They forgot the ‘babies,’” who had to walk to the junior high.

Despite a large police presence, there was cruel harassment. Such behavior was not confined to racial slurs, which, of course, were terribly hurtful. The students were also showered with sticks and pebbles. Some were shoved. Many of those at Norview High School believe there was an agreement between the police and the crowd that the former would look away as long as the latter did not engage in overt violence.

When they entered their respective buildings, the young women were subjected to constant taunting. When they took their seats in class, the auditorium or the cafeteria, the other students would move away. As Brown recalls, “No one came to sit close to me. They left the whole row front and back [vacant]. Nobody was there.” Even some of the teachers and administrative staff ignored them. Turner’s homeroom and history teacher was an outspoken segregationist. As she recalls, “The man hated me. The whole half a year that he had me he never hurt me, but he never acknowledged that I was breathing. He put on rubber gloves to touch my papers. He had a little box on the side of his desk. That is the way he communicated with me. He put my papers in there. ... The first day he put himself in between me and the door. I knew that was the end of my life. I was so afraid. ... I just sat there and did not even breathe. But he did not do anything to me because I did not exist in his world.”

It seemed to Brown that the black students at Norview High School were deliberately isolated from each other. Although they were following the same curriculum, they never saw each other either in the halls or the cafeteria.

In addition to the taunting that continued every day for years, the students believed they were in physical danger. One of the students who integrated Norview Junior High School was stabbed by an adult as her father looked on after dropping her off at the school. The incident was kept quiet as neither the city nor the NAACP wanted to jeopardize the process of desegregation. Brown herself was assaulted in a hallway by a student who inflicted a small cut with what she believes was a razor blade. Turner’s brother was beaten. Ken Whitley, a white student-athlete and football teammate of Andrew Heidelberg, another one of the Norfolk 17, came to his rescue, she said.

Despite the harassment, Brown and Turner persisted through the spring term. Brown, who had married three months before entering Norview High School, did not return for her senior year in the fall. She left school to start a family, but, realizing the importance of education, she went back to Booker T. Washington and graduated in 1963. In 1968, she earned a bachelor’s degree at Norfolk State University and embarked on what would be a 28-year teaching career in the Norfolk Public Schools. In 1975, she received a master’s degree in education from Old Dominion and a certificate of advanced study eight years later.

Turner finished the eighth grade at Norview Junior High and went on to survive four years at Norview High School, earning her diploma in 1963. After graduation, she moved to Philadelphia where she worked as a supervisor for the telephone company, before beginning a 20-year career in nursing. Gifted in mathematics, she decided to switch careers and become a teacher. She also earned a bachelor’s degree from Norfolk State in just three years, and began a teaching career in the Norfolk Public Schools. In 1997, she received her master’s in education from ODU. After teaching at Blair Middle School for 16 years, she retired in June 2008.

The word “hero” is often used loosely today, but it is fair to say that Delores Johnson Brown and Patricia Turner, along with the other members of the Norfolk 17, became heroes at an early age. And, as heroes often do, they paid a price. Turner remarks that, unlike soldiers fresh from battle, the Norfolk 17 were never debriefed. Many, especially the younger ones, were “not allowed to experience childhood,” she added.

The first reunion of the Norfolk 17 took place in the early 1960s with an event at Norfolk Community Hospital. Some of the members have stayed in contact over the years, while others have found the memories too painful to relive. Three, including Turner’s brother, have passed away. In 2002, the city of Norfolk issued a resolution honoring the group for their courage and determination. The most recent reunion was held July 6, 2008, at First Baptist Church. Twelve of the original 17 civil rights pioneers were present when they were honored by the congregation whose church provided instructional space for them back in 1958.

The city of Norfolk intends to mark the 50th anniversary of Norfolk’s school desegregation with a series of events in February.

James R. Sweeney is an associate professor of history at Old Dominion, where he has taught since 1970. He is the author of “Old Dominion University: A Half Century of Service” (1980) and editor of “Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance: The Diary of David J. Mays, 1954-1959” (University of Georgia Press, 2008).