The former students who broke the color barrier at Norfolk's all-white public schools 50 years ago are marking the milestone by leading a "unity march."

About half of the 14 surviving "Norfolk 17" and their families led Monday's march to commemorate the end of Massive Resistance, Virginia's stubborn defiance of school desegregation.

The Norfolk 17 were the first black students to attend Norfolk's previously all-white public schools, which initially closed rather than accept them.

Among the hundreds who marched were members of the so-called Lost Class, the thousands of white students who were locked out of their schools in September 1958. A federal court order reopened the schools the following February.

The march's route included the federal courthouse where a judge ordered the schools integrated, a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the church where the Norfolk 17 took their lessons when they were barred from the white schools.