Factiva

Penny Moudrianakis was 7 in 1950 when her mom, Ruth James, took her to a meeting of the Women's Council for Inter-racial Cooperation over her father's objections.

Days before the meeting, the home of a black family had been blown up a few blocks from the church. The council, a group of black and white women, worked together to improve conditions for blacks but so feared racist reprisals that it kept its membership roster confidential.

Despite the fear, Ruth James was going to her meeting.

"I don't remember any of the discussion, but I remembered my dad feared for our safety," Moudrianakis said. "But that was my mom. When she had her mind set on something, that was it."

Her mom's resolve that night is one of Moudrianakis' best memories of James, who died Tuesday after a yearlong battle with leukemia. She would have been 85 on Monday.

Funeral services will be held today for the woman called a quiet social activist, a woman who hated public speaking but would challenge the Norfolk City Council when necessary, who would spend hours on the phone, on a typewriter, or at secret meetings for the ideals of justice and fairness.

In October 1958, James and her husband, Ellis M. James, were the chief litigants on behalf of their daughter in two lawsuits to reopen Norfolk Public Schools, which had closed to stop integration. The State Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in January 1959 that closing the schools was unconstitutional.

In the early 1960s, James successfully convinced the City Council to buy land for Maury High School's athletic field and physical education programs.

James appealed to the City Council again in the 1970s to appoint more women to city agencies.

She was known for cheering for the underdog football team and screaming "It's not fair!" when the evening news showed Native Americans or women struggling to get a fair shake.

Friends and family say she had the same zeal at home. James was the Cub Scout den mother every son wanted and the undaunted grandmother who went mountain-hiking with her granddaughter at the age of 71.

"I'm finding out every hour how she affected many folks," said her oldest son, Ellis W. James. "They've all said the same thing. She had this beautiful smile, and it wasn't a put-on. She was deeply, deeply concerned about what was right and what was fair."

James was born in 1912 in South Norfolk, the daughter of a Quaker family that stressed love of one's neighbor and racial harmony. She graduated from Maury High School in the late 1920s.

The first female student at Old Dominion University in 1930, when it was a branch of William and Mary, James completed college in 1934, and taught elementary school until she married Ellis M. James, a well-known real estate agent, in 1936.

Her first son, Ellis, was born in 1937, and Ruth James became active in civic work, including the Women's Council. She had a second son, Franklin, in 1940. The family became involved in the desegregation cause in 1958 when Norfolk, like several Virginia school districts, closed schools under the state's "massive resistance" policy. The Jameses joined other families to form the Norfolk Committee for Public Schools to save the schools. The lawsuit was necessary to break massive resistance, but other families feared public scorn. Ruth and Ellis James stood up.

"In those days, to even talk to black folks was dangerous, traitorous," Ellis W. James said. "And my family paid the price."

Death threats and late-night phone calls followed the lawsuit. Penny, a freshman at Maury when the lawsuit was filed, stopped getting phone calls from friends. Bridge partners stopped coming around for the family's regular card games.

"That was really hard on my mom," Ellis W. James said. "She needed people, but people closed them out."

Word around Norfolk quickly spread to stop using Ellis James Real Estate for business. By the early 1960s, James lost his business, and Ruth James went back to college, earned her master's degree, and began teaching to take care of the family.

Her husband died in 1973. She continued to teach until she retired in the late 1970s. Ruth James also continued to work with community groups, including the YWCA.

Anna Brinkley, sister of the late Joseph Jordan, a local civil rights legend, had known Ruth James for years and said her strength and compassion will be missed.

"I felt she was a genuine individual," Brinkley said. "She exhibited many of her humanitarian instincts with all persons she came into contact with."

Photo Ruth James 1912-1997 Staff/File Photo In 1953, Ruth James, fourth from left...

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