{"id":1965,"date":"2014-05-16T15:30:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T15:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2014-05-20T20:49:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:49:25","slug":"vb-middle-honors-historic-anniversary-with-norfolk-17-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/vb-middle-honors-historic-anniversary-with-norfolk-17-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"VB Middle honors historic anniversary with Norfolk 17 speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the better part of an hour, they had sat and listened to Patricia Godbolt White speak. She talked of rising above persecution, the successes achieved throughout her educational career and the pride she had in her family, raised here in Hampton Roads.<\/p>\n

But still one young man in the audience could not get past part of her story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did they throw the knife at you?\u201d his voice asked timidly.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they were just mean,\u201d he was assured.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a reason for it,\u201d he stammered back.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo…no.\u201d<\/p>\n

White was one of the Norfolk 17, the first black students\u00a0after desegregation in 1959 to attend previously all white Norfolk schools. In honor of the 60th<\/sup> anniversary of the groundbreaking Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Virginia Beach Middle School (VBMS) administration wanted students to get a real perspective on the impact desegregation had on the people who lived through it.<\/p>\n

Luckily, they did not need to go far.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3718\"<\/a><\/p>\n

VBMS Guidance Director Lavell White is Patricia\u2019s son. He arranged for his mother to speak to classes about her experiences as a young high school student bravely taking on a world of hate and bigotry by just walking through her school\u2019s doors each day.<\/p>\n

Her stories kept the middle-schooler-filled schola spellbound.<\/p>\n

She talked of the English teacher who flunked her paper because she had capitalized one word incorrectly. That same English teacher refused her admittance to the National Honor Society because, he told her, membership was brought before a student vote, and the students did not want her in.<\/p>\n

Years later, as an NHS advisor herself, she would learn students never voted on membership.<\/p>\n

She also spoke of a normal morning, walking to the school\u2019s entrance. Suddenly, she heard a sound at her feet. She looked down and saw a knife had been flung at her. She just kept walking.<\/p>\n

The world around her was talking of the \u201cmassive resistance\u201d to integration. For Patricia, and her 16 colleagues, they were doing their best to take part in \u201cpassive resistance\u201d to the prejudice they were subjected to.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe acted as if nothing was happening,\u201d she said. Later, during a question and answer session, she expounded on this idea when a student asked what to do when a bully gets you down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can bring you down only if you let them,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you ignore them, they get no gratification from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3741\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Though that did not mean there was not fear.<\/p>\n

In one of the most chilling moments of her presentation, Patricia revealed how she desperately prayed for rain on her graduation day. Graduations at that time were held outside in the school\u2019s football field, which meant they were open to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was afraid, very afraid,\u201d Patricia said. \u201cI was afraid somebody was going to shoot me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It did not rain that day, and Patricia graduated \u2013 incident free \u2013 as the first African American from a desegregated school in the state of Virginia.<\/p>\n

Her accolades did not stop there. She attended Washington College and was the first African-American female to graduate from its campus. Attending college also afforded her the opportunity to build friendships that would soothe the wounds left from her high school years.<\/p>\n

Case in point, one night a group of girls in the dorm invited Patricia to come to the movie theater with them to catch a show. Though hesitant, Patricia went along. Once there, the theater manager told Patricia she would have to sit in the balcony of the theater \u2013 away from all the other white guests. She walked up the stairs alone and took a seat by herself in the balcony.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t lonely for long.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear all this noise and there were all my friends from Washington College coming to sit with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Patricia told the students her four years in college \u201ctook the bitter taste\u201d out of her mouth from the years of mistreatment she had received. In fact, Patricia was able to put aside the years of hardship as a teenager and she returned to Norfolk Public Schools, this time as a teacher. She went on to teach in the school system for 42 years.<\/p>\n

And, with the skill and passionate delivery of a teacher with four decades of classroom experience, Patricia left VBMS\u2019s students with a simple challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecome authors,\u201d she said. \u201cBecome artists. Become great if you are not already that.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the better part of an hour, they had sat and listened to Patricia Godbolt White speak. She talked of rising above persecution, the successes achieved throughout her educational career […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1965"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1984,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions\/1984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}