Front Royal, Charlottesville, and Norfolk—found themselves sitting at home in the fall of 1958. “I would rather have my children live in ignorance than have them go to school with Negroes,” one white parent told a reporter. A total of ten thousand of the shut-out students lived in Norfolk: 5,500 of those from military families stationed at the naval base, white students as well as black paying the price for the state’s racial crusade.
