How Norfolk became segregated: the century-long roots of the city’s ‘Dividing Lines’ Sara Gregory and Ryan Murphy, The Virginian-Pilot
A mob marched on Norfolk in 1923.
A new family had moved onto Corprew Avenue, a “white block” as far as city ordinance was concerned, the northernmost boundary of the well-to-do enclave of Brambleton, which was then on the city’s outskirts.
The family moving in considered themselves white, but the armed crowd, which included a sitting City Council member, saw no place on the block for what whites thought were light-skinned Black people.
“Brambleton is in Eruption Again,” the Norfolk Journal and Guide newspaper reported after the mob descended on the home, intimidating its occupants and trying to force them to move.