Hampton Roads Magazine: A City Separated

My feature article on the fight to desegregate Norfolk's public schools, "A City Separated," can be found in the February issue of Hampton Roads Magazine. It's on sale now. Or you can read a sizable chunk of the story online. It starts like this:

Andrew Heidelberg wondered what the commotion was about. 

“Why are all of these guys walking past the shower, looking at me,” he asked a white friend one day after PE.

“Andy, I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,” his buddy said.

“Believe what?”

“They’ve been told that black people come from monkeys, and they want to see if you’ve got a tail.”

Today, recounting this incredible story, the dark-skinned Heidelberg has to laugh. “This was real, man.”

He was one of a group of African-American teenagers known as the Norfolk 17, the first to attend formerly all-white high schools in Norfolk after a well-publicized standoff between the city and new federal desegregation laws in 1959. 

Click here to read "A City Separated," in this month's Hampton Roads Magazine.