Members of the Norfolk 17 will receive Norfolk State University's Forever Upward award during the school's annual President's Gala.

Norfolk State said Tuesday that the award is the highest honor bestowed by the president's office.

The gala is set for March 28 at the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel.

During Virginia's "Massive Resistance" to school integration, three all-white high schools and three junior high schools in Norfolk closed between September 1958 and February 1959. The Norfolk 17 were the first black students who attended the schools after a federal judge ordered them reopened to all.