Charlottesville has undergone some major transformations in the past eight decades. Schools have been desegregated. Neighborhoods have changed. The population has increased, as has traffic.

Josephine Lightfoot Whitsett, 84, has seen it all. Whitsett, who lives in the same house on Page Street in which she was born, worked as an educator in the city school system for nearly four decades and remains active in the community both through her public service sorority - Delta Sigma Theta - and her church - Ebenezer Baptist on Sixth Street.“I can’t even fathom the number of lives she has touched,” said Jacqueline Estes, who attended city schools and has taught at Charlottesville High School for 29 years. “She’s made a big impact across the city of Charlottesville on so many people, especially children.”

As a child, Whitsett fell in love with school.

“I was always infatuated with school,” Whitsett said. “And I like people, especially young people, so I think that motivated me to become a teacher.”

Whitsett’s parents were avid believers in the importance of education and encouraged their seven daughters to pursue academic success.

Whitsett graduated from Charlottesville’s segregated school system in the early 1940s and enrolled at Hampton Institute. She was the second person in her family to go to college and graduated in 1947.

Returning to teach

After graduation, Whitsett came back to Charlottesville and got a job as a teacher at the all-black Jefferson School, which she had attended as a child.

“I was very fortunate to come home and get a job,” she said.

When Charlottesville’s school system was desegregated in the 1960s, Whitsett was reassigned to Clark Elementary, which had previously been an all-white school.

In the late 1960s, Whitsett earned a master’s degree in education at the University of Virginia. Shortly thereafter, she was moved from Clark to become the guidance counselor at Lane High School.

“There were quite a bit of racial problems at Lane,” she said. “The principal of Lane knew that I knew a lot of the students and their parents, so they moved me up to the high school. So I was able to go in to help smother some of the racial issues.”

Whitsett moved to Charlottesville High School when it was built in 1974. She retired in 1986.

‘A role model’

Over the course of her career, Whitsett earned the reputation as someone students could depend upon.

“She was a role model, especially for girls, because of the respectful manner in which she carried herself,” Estes said. “She made you feel important and made you believe in yourself.”

Whitsett said that those traits came naturally for her.

“That’s how I was,” she said. “People thought of me as someone who cared and was easy to talk with.”

Whitsett treated her students with respect. For example, she would call them by their real names, not by nicknames.

“One student, who is of good age now, every time he sees me he says, ‘You were my favorite teacher. You called me William, not Billy Boy,’” Whitsett said. “Something as simple as that can make a lasting impression on people.”

As a guidance counselor, Whitsett was involved with discipline and social issues as well as scheduling and college planning.

During a period of racial unrest at Lane in the early 1970s, Whitsett was able to provide advice to her own daughter, a student at the time.

“When some African-American students boycotted classes after some white students had walked out of an assembly when ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was sung, we went to my mother and asked what we should do,” Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond said. “My mother said, ‘Bernadette, you need to do what your heart tells you to do.’ So we went ahead and boycotted.”

Retired, but not idle

Early in retirement, Whitsett cared for three older sisters who were sick.

Now she devotes most of her time to her church and sorority.

Whitsett is a deaconess at Ebenezer Baptist and used to sing in the choir there.

She was a founding member of the Delta Sigma Theta chapter at Hampton and was involved in creating a chapter at UVa in the late 1960s.

Delta Sigma Theta is a public-service sorority that focuses on educational development; economic development; international awareness and involvement; mental and physical health; and political awareness and involvement.

Out in the community, Whitsett is frequently reminded of the positive impact she has had.

“She has adults come up to her now and say ‘I loved you’ or ‘You were the best teacher I ever had,’” Whitsett-Hammond said.

This article was provided by: Daily Progress
Written by: Barney Breen-Portnoy