SCARS OF THE NORFOLK 17
Forbes-Brown recalled as a reluctant trailblazer — and beloved mother
LaVéra Forbes-Brown died a year ago this week. She was 76. She also made history 65 years ago Friday. Forbes-Brown was a mother of two boys and she raised them in the “old-school era,” her son Albert White said recently, teaching them to be gentlemen. She was loving and generous with her time, but parts of her past were too painful to share.
Growing up, White heard bits and pieces about when his mother was young and how she helped integrate Norfolk Public Schools on Feb. 2, 1959, as one of the Norfolk 17 — a term he did not fully understand until he was older.
His mother’s story is tied to the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1955, when schools were ordered to end segregation. Virginia responded by leading a “Massive Resistance” movement in 1956, a collection of laws that fought to keep white and Black students in separate classes throughout the South.
Norfolk schools instituted a tedious application and testing process for African American students wanting to attend the all-white schools that were in better condition and closer to their homes. But the students were still denied until a federal judge in September 1958 ordered officials to admit a select few — the Norfolk 17.
Instead of admitting the Black students, the state padlocked six of the city’s junior and high schools where the students were assigned, leaving them and close to 10,000 white students without education for five months.
The white students transferred to private schools, enrolled in schools in other cities or formed tutoring groups led by Norfolk teachers; the 17 took classes set up at First Baptist Church
on Bute Street. A photograph of the group on the church steps shows Forbes-Brown front and center, dressed neatly in a collared dress and Mary Janes. Her arms are filled with books and she has a shy smile. Even then, she was known as sweet and introverted.
When schools opened that frigid February morning, Forbes-Brown walked to Norview Junior High School with a few other African American students.
The Norfolk Ledger-Star reported the students entered “through a door opened for them by a white teacher without incident. Nattily dressed, they appeared unperturbed by their new surroundings.” Crowds of journalists flanked the newly desegregated schools. Attendance was low — white parents had kept their children home to see how the first few days would go.
Patricia Turner, another member of the Norfolk 17, was a year ahead of Forbes-Brown at Norview Junior. The retired educator still remembers, 65 years later, how she and the others were verbally, emotionally and physically abused by other students, teachers and strangers.
White and Black people threw rocks at the children during their walk; some Blacks resented the 17 students for wanting to leave their former schools. ForbesBrown revealed in 2004 that she was stabbed in the back during her first days and had to be taken to the emergency room, according to an Old Dominion University Exhibit, “School Desegregation in Norfolk,
Virginia.” Her father and a lawyer, though, told her not to talk about it. They worried it would jeopardize the desegregation efforts if word of the attack got out.
White often thinks about how he was able to just be a kid in school — while his mother never got that chance.
“I remember times when I was in middle school and the pressures we had as kids — bonding and making friends and all this kind of stuff,” he said. “Put yourself in their shoes, it’s kind of like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ ”
Forbes-Brown graduated from Norview High in 1964. She studied business administration/management and computer programming at Norfolk State University before working for the Navy for over 20 years. She and her husband divorced when their boys were pre-teens.
White considers her a role model who kept her sons in check and made sure they took their education seriously. His friends loved her and how she welcomed them into their home.
She quietly carried the scars from her teen years, often struggling to open up or attend events for the memorials, murals and special exhibits that were being erected to honor the 17 for bravery as children. Forbes-Brown often declined media interviews.
The few times White tried asking his mom more about that time, she was clearly uncomfortable. She wasn’t mean, he said. But she was haunted.
In recent years, White, who lives in Suffolk, began piecing the story together. He read newspaper articles and interviews with members of the Norfolk 17. Before the pandemic, he worked as a school resource officer in Norfolk and would see his mother’s picture on school bulletin boards during Black History Month. White would tell students that his mother was one of the pioneers.
Forbes-Brown didn’t tell her story in part because she was naturally reserved. But hers is only one of many that needs to be understood, he said.
“There are probably hidden stories that nobody knows about,” White said. “It needs to come to the surface as well. This is just a portion of history.”
“I remember times when I was in middle school and the pressures we had as kids — bonding and making friends and all this kind of stuff. Put yourself in their shoes, it’s kind of like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ ”
— Al White, son of LaVéra Forbes-Brown