Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Doors And Minds Begin To Open: Decade Of Desegregation, Carolyn S. Parsons

Administrative and Professional Faculty Research

In February of 1968, five young women gathered informally in the office of The Bullet, Mary Washington's student newspaper. They wanted to talk about something they all were experiencing: isolation. On a campus with more than 2,000 students, they were the only African-Americans. Three were freshmen - Claudith "Dottie" Holmes and twin sisters Anita and Orita Whitehead. The other two - Venus Jones and Chris Hall - were upperclassmen. Four of the "Big Five," as they called themselves in reference to the Big Four civil rights leaders, would become the first group of African-American students to graduate from what was …