Ed. — From the Sunday, Jan. 21, print edition.
VIRGINIA BEACH — Patricia Pickett was one of 38 African-American students who integrated Woodstock Elementary School and Kempsville Junior High School.
“We are not bitter,” she says. “We are better.”
It’s important to remember the people who changed our community. Many of them are still among us.
But some of our local history essentially has been hidden over the decades.
Pickett and I met last year, and the words I quote above are from remarks she made when she and the other members of the “Fearless 38” were recognized in October by the Centerville Historic Society.
This overdue reunion and celebration came after efforts by Edna Hawkins-Hendrix, a local historian, to document their place in our history, according to reporting by Leonard E. Colvin in The New Journal & Guide.
Desegregation of public schools in Virginia began in 1959, but many places shamefully – or shamelessly – held out.
These schools allowed Black students for the first time in 1962.
Pickett experienced racism, racist language and white students who did not want to have anything to do with Black students.
“Sometimes the children were stand-off-ish and did not want to interact directly with the Black children, as if they were afraid to touch us or come into contact with us,” she said. She believes white parents had “seeded their minds with ridiculous ideas” about Black people. They were treated differently by adults, too.
“Some of the white teachers acted indifferent to our presence and did not interact with the Black children as closely or as friendly as they did with the white children,” she said. “Typically, there might be only one Black child in a class.”
It left students feeling isolated. On the last day of third grade, Pickett recalled, a teacher had the children line up. Pickett was at the end of the line.
“The teacher warmly hugged all the white children as they passed out the door, telling them to have a great summer. When I got up to the teacher, she did not hug me as she had all the white children, and she only patted me on the top of my head.”
It made her feel like the teacher saw her as a puppy, not a person. I wondered why she thinks the story of the Fearless 38 isn’t known more widely.
“I believe that the stories of the Fearless 38 were (revisited) in part as an effort to rightly record in history the experiences and stories of 38 Black children and record the fact that history was made,” said Pickett, who still lives in Virginia Beach.
Hatred and negativity she experienced at Woodstock Elementary did not steal her determination to succeed. Her parents gave her a foundation. She built upon it.
Pickett attended Kempsville High School. She was the school’s first Black majorette, performed in concert band and graduated with honors. She studied business administration at Norfolk State University, again graduating with honors.
In 1978, after starting her family, she was recruited by the U. S. Department of Labor and became the first Black and female investigator to work in the Norfolk field office.
“When I was hired, all the investigators in that office were and had always been white males,” Pickett told me.
She earned her master’s degree in public administration from Old Dominion University, earning, of course, honors. She broke barriers as she ascended to leadership roles and retired after 38 years of public service.
She spoke of her foundation.
“My parents emphasized that no matter what anybody said or called me, I was who God said I was, that I was as good as anyone else … and could accomplish as much as anyone else could and that, if I worked hard and did not give up, I could be anything I wanted to be.”
Working hard often meant working harder, studying harder, earning greater credentials than others after the same position.
But family and faith propelled her to succeed, which she did.
Her life of service and strength are worth celebrating, as is her place – and the place of 37 other people – in our history.
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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