Bessida Cauthorne White, a native and resident of Middlesex County, will give a public presentation, “Recognizing and Sharing Family Treasures,” at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 15, at First Baptist Church, Mathews.
This Black History Month program is sponsored by the Mathews County Historical Society and the church.
A retired attorney, genealogist and president of the Middle Peninsula African-American Historical and Genealogical Society, White received a Juris Doctorate from the Marshall Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary and is the first black person and woman to serve as president of that school’s Student Bar Association.
Appointed a substitute judge of the General District Court of the City of Richmond, she is the first black woman to sit on the bench in Virginia. White has been an activist for nearly 60 years beginning with integrating the lunch counter at Marshall’s Drug Store in Urbanna in 1962. “She is a woman of broad intellectual and artistic interests, who wi...