Brenda Robinson Fuller remembers a hush falling over the classroom on her first day at her new school. The other students began to whisper as she made her way to her desk at the front of the class.
It was 1967, and she was the only Black student in her homeroom at Pittsylvania County’s Gretna High School.
“At that young age, when you have all eyes on you, that was frightening,” Fuller said. “You hear the snickering, that type of thing. I heard it, and I tried to ignore it … but I was uncomfortable.”
Fuller had transferred from Northside High School, one of two Black-only high schools in the county in the 1960s. She had attended segregated schools from first grade until ninth grade.
Then, before her sophomore year, Fuller heard about Virginia’s Freedom of Choice policy, which allowed Black students to opt to attend white high schools.
Virginia instituted this policy from 1965 to 1969 instead of fully integrating after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended segregation in public schools.