BLACKSBURG, Va. – Six women broke the color barrier at Virginia Tech more than 50 years ago, and two of them talked about their time on campus on Friday.
Inclusive VT hosted a forum with La Vernee Hairston Higgins and Marguerite Harper Scott as part of its “Unfinished Conversations” series. Higgins and Scott both enrolled at Virginia Tech in 1966.
Higgins is a native of Roanoke. She said the adjustment to college life was difficult because of what she experienced in the classroom.
“The hardest part for me was the faculty,” Higgins said. “I literally had a faculty member who, after he gave his introduction to the class, turned directly to me and said, ‘Some of you will not pass this class.’ I had not experienced that before.”
Scott graduated from Virginia Tech in 1970, while Higgins transferred from the university after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.