Through private donations and a grant from the Gloucester Community Foundation, two Gloucester High School graduates—Xavier Johnson and Joelle Forrest—were each awarded $3,000 scholarships from the Irene Morgan Scholarship Fund. The fund was established to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Irene Morgan, a courageous African-American woman who was arrested in Middlesex County in 1944 for violating a state law imposing racial segregation in public facilities and transportation, refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and ruled against segregation in interstate travel, nearly a decade before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat to a white person on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala.

...