Four years after the May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Virginia continued to resist compliance through a strategy called Massive Resistance. Rather than admit 17 black students assigned by the Norfolk School Board to previously all-white junior and senior high schools, Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr. seized Norfolk's all-white junior and senior high schools on September 29, 1958, and ordered them closed. The closures barred nearly 10,000 students from attending classes, including the 17 black students. Granby, Maury, and Norview high schools, along with Blair, Northside, and Norview junior high schools, remained closed until February 2, 1959, when rulings by the Virginia Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court in Norfolk led to their reopening with the 17 black students in attendance.
