In the News
'History Makers' to be honored
Christina Killion Valdez
February 26, 2009
Couple wasn't afraid to make a difference
Young, in love and eager to start their lives together, newlyweds Virge and Jackie Trotter moved from Chicago to Rochester in February 1965. He was 22 and had been offered a job as an engineer at IBM. She was 21 and pregnant with their first child.
They called to see several apartments but instead got a sharper perspective on the city that was to be their home.
At one apartment, they said, a woman opened the door, holding a cat in her arms. She looked at the young, black couple and, without saying a word, slammed the door.
"I'm sure she's a very loving and considerate person," Jackie said, now able to laugh about the incident. "To her cat."
Though the incident shocked them, it also motivated the couple to get involved and help spread the lessons of nondiscrimination they'd grown up with. More than four decades, four children and countless awards and accomplishments later, Virge and Jackie Troter will be honored Friday as Black History Makers in Rochester. The award will be presented at the George W. Gibbs Lecture Series hosted by the Mayo Clinic's African Descendents Support Network.
"We always felt that this community could be great, but it had to be great for everybody," Jackie said.
Starting an NAACP Chapter
In the months after moving to Rochester and before their son was born that June, the Trotters helped start a local chapter of the NAACP, a longtime dream of a couple they met here.
To do so, they needed 50 members, Virge said, but there were only 10 or 15 African-Americans living in Rochester then.
"We could name everybody," Jackie said.
So the vast majority of the members were white, they said.
"I was the secretary," Jackie said, remembering writing out postcards inviting people to a meeting while in the hospital to give birth to their first child.
The coupld eventually had four boys, all of who went to John Marshall High School.
"I was doing two loads of black and red clothes a day for years," Jackie said.
That didn't mean the couple cut back on their community involvement.
"We had to keep a calendar," Virge said. They juggled volunteer work and raised a family. "If someone put a meeting on the calendar first, the other person had to figure out what to do with the kids."
Among Jackie's commitments was helping rewrite the schools' curriculum to include black history. She also taught preschoolers about why people are different colors. Later, she reworked the lesson for older students and presented it in every elementary school starting in 1975 and continuing for about 10 years.
When fighting broke out in the schools along race lines in the late 1980s, Jackie helped found Building Equality Together, the precursor to the Diversity Council of which she was an executive director. The nonprofit organization found support in the community and from businesses. That itself was a breakthrough after the previous mayor insisted Rochester didn't have any race issues, she said.
Youth football program
Virge was also making a difference in young people's lives as a youth football coach and director of the youth football program, which he was involved with for 10 years starting in 1973. He later joined the board of the Community Housing Partnership, serving for nine years and working to eliminate discriminatory housing practices.
The couple also supported Rochester Better Chance and hosted a student in the program, which offers educational opportunities to minority students.
Part of what's kept them going, Virge said, is seeing so many others out there volunteering.
They also understood that it's not the people who were bad but their actions, attitudes and ignorance, which could be changed, Jackie said.
"You just have to keep pushing the ball forward," Virge said.
"We've seen all colors of people pushing the ball forward," Jackie added.
© 2009 Post Bulletin. Used by permission.
