Norfolk State University Through The Years:
“Behold the Green and Gold”

The Dream Takes Shape

By Gary Ruegsegger
Special To The New Journal and Guide
  
       In the late spring of 1932, the dream that would become Norfolk State University began to take shape.  Winston Douglas, a Lincoln University graduate and principal of Booker T. Washington High School (BTW), was one of the dreamers.
      Douglas and Dr. John Talmadge Givens were discussing the high costs of sending children away to college. It was a “casual conversation.” 
      Dr. Givens’ daughter Alma was a student at Nashville’s Fisk University.  Douglas’ two sons, Winston Jr. and Cromwell, were just beginning high school.
      Both his sons graduated from BTW and followed their father’s footsteps to Lincoln University.
    

    Cromwell went on to Mcharry Medical College in Nashville.  Curiously, it’s right across the street from Alma Givens’ Fisk University.  Winston Jr. became a physicist and later earned his law  degree.
      To say the least, education was valued in the Douglas home.
      The BTW principal was concerned that many of his brightest students ended their formal education on graduation day.  The families of those graduates simply could not afford to send their children to Virginia State College or Hampton Institute or Virginia Union University.
     “No doubt about it, Winston Douglas was a brilliant man   He did what he said and said what he did,” recalled Celestyne Diggs Porter, a 1929 BTW graduate.
    Before too long, the wheels started to roll.

To read the rest of this and other stories, subscribe to the New Journal and Guide.