With this striking collection of historical images, experience afront-row view of the origination of the public school system within Hampton Roads and the epic struggle for racial equality. From the seventeenth century until the present, this area of the Old Dominion has been at the forefront of challenges, including Reconstruction, Jim Crow law, racial disharmony and public resistance to tax-based public schools. The fiftieth anniversary of the reopening of Norfolk's desegregated schools marks an especially appropriate occasion on which to look back at the evolution of public education in the Hampton Roads region.