Click on the faces in the interactive presentation below learn about the lives of The Norfolk 17 since the Massive Resistance.

 
SPECIAL REPORT: Fighting Massive Resistance, A six-part series

When the state closed six schools to keep 17 black children from entering them, it also locked out nearly 10,000 white students. "My world and all of our worlds had changed, and it was through no fault of our own," said Suzanne Shipp Owens, Granby High School Class of 1959.

It was all so inane, Hal Bonney Jr. says now of the ploys that state and local leaders took in 1958 to keep schools segregated – and of his own views.

Bonney was a Norview High School history teacher then and became one of the most recognizable opponents of integration after he appeared in the nationally televised documentary, “The Lost Class of ’59.”

  A NOTE TO READERS: Since most of this series covers events of the 1950s and ’60s, we chose to use the language of the time, such as “Negro” and “colored.”   SPECIAL REPORT: Fighting Massive Resistance, A six-part series

 
A NOTE TO READERS: Since most of this series covers events of the 1950s and ’60s, we chose to use the language of the time, such as “Negro” and “colored.”
 
SPECIAL REPORT: Fighting Massive Resistance, A six-part series

Three weeks later than originally scheduled, Norfolk schools were finally ready to open. Well, most of them. On Sept. 29, 1958, 48 of Norfolk's schools welcomed students - but the doors of six were padlocked and under police guard. Maury, Norview and Granby high schools and Northside, Norview and Blair junior highs remained closed under a state order designed to fight integration.

Friday, Aug. 29, 1958, dawned gray, the shadow of Hurricane Daisy off in the Atlantic, as crowds made their way to the third floor of the federal courthouse. School Board Chairman Paul Schweitzer stood before the judge and read a declaration approved by the board the night before:

Courtroom One buzzed with the School Board chairman's words: Patricia Godbolt - Exhibit High School Case No. 5 - definitely would have been approved to attend Norview High "if she had been white."

Marjorie Turner and her two oldest children slid into the crowded benches of Courtroom One at the federal courthouse. Turner had been subpoenaed along with a handful of other Negro parents, school principals and psychologists for a hearing about the testing program. It was Monday, Aug. 18, 1958.

Norfolk officials announced today a series of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the deathblow to Massive Resistance, a strategy used to prevent the integration of Virginia schools.