Biography
Norvel Lee was a boxer, educator and civil rights pioneer from Eagle Rock, Virginia. On September 14, 1948, the Alleghany County sheriff arrested him after he refused to leave the whites-only section of a Chesapeake and Ohio train in Covington. Convicted and fined under Virginia segregation law, Lee appealed. On September 7, 1949, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, holding that the segregation requirement could not be applied to his interstate journey. He later won an Olympic boxing gold medal in Helsinki in 1952.
