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, Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr. seized Norfolk's all-white junior and senior high schools on September 29, 1958, and ordered them closed, barring nearly 10,000 students from attending classes, including the 17 black students. Granby, Maury, and Norview high schools and Blair, Northside, and Norview junior high schools remained closed until February 2, 1959, when they reopened with the 17 black students in attendance after rulings by the Virginia Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court in Norfolk. The students were Betty Jean Reed, Louis Cousins, Olivia Driver, Patricia Godbolt, Alveraze Frederick Gonsouland, Andrew Heidelberg, Delores Johnson, Johnnie Rouse, Carol Wellington, Lolita Portis, Reginald Young, Geraldine Talley, Levera Forbes, Edward Jordan, James Turner Jr, Patricia Turner, and Claudia Wellington.
