A long overdue history of a Black community in the heart of the South and its vibrant and inspiring legacy

As the cultural and economic center of the Virginia Tidewater region, the great historic seaport city of Norfolk has flourished on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay for more than three hundred years. I, Too, Am Norfolk celebrates the contributions of the city’s Black residents—contributions that have gone overlooked and underappreciated for too long.

Norfolk’s Black community has a remarkable history. In 1865, the city’s Black residents were the first in the United States to collectively demand equal rights, including the right to vote, when they issued a nationally circulated pamphlet. Through decades of Jim Crow, Black residents boldly resisted pay discrimination, disenfranchisement, and the poll tax. And in 1943, teacher Sarah B. Davis protested segregated seating on a Norfolk bus—a decade before Rosa Parks did so in Montgomery. The first Black woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, as well as the first Black state supreme court justice, grew up in segregated Norfolk. This is the story of how the city’s Black community challenged their relegation to slavery, serfdom, and second-class citizenship, fighting every step of the way to realize true freedom for themselves and their children.