2 schools' students 'integrated' after 50 years: It's been 50 years since Peggy Robinson Roberts and her classmates in Leesburg graduated from segregated high schools, in separate ceremonies. Back then, teens at all-black Douglass High knew little about their counterparts at all-white Loudoun County. They didn't sit in the same classes, play on the same football fields or sing in the same glee clubs.
Now, after almost a lifetime apart, their shared history of racial segregation has taken an unexpected turn. They have met, traded memories and struck up the kind of friendships they might've enjoyed five decades ago had America been a different place.
'It's never too late,' Roberts, 68, said the other day, showing a few of her new friends around Douglass, now an alternative school. 'People may ask, 'Why now?' But I don't care why now. The important thing is it's happened.'
A month earlier, white and black members of the Class of 1960 gathered in Purcellville for dinner - a get-acquainted evening for about 40 people born through an e-mail exchange between two white alumni.
The belated coming-together is a rare occurrence, say school experts, noting that many schools are becoming resegregated because of housing patterns and school district boundaries.
