HRT Honors Trailblazer in Women's History

Doris Ward Mims has been called a trailblazer in women’s history. Especially for Black women. It’s likely you’ve never heard her name when it comes to Hampton Roads history. We here at Hampton Roads Transit, along with her family, would like to change that.

Doris Ward Mims was the first woman and first Black person to drive a bus in the city of Norfolk. Of course, no one really understood the significance back in 1963, when she first slipped into the driver’s seat. There was no big send-off with balloons or a television crew to capture the historic moment. It’s only now, decades later, that we can fully appreciate what it meant.

Mims was, as her daughter put it, a “double minority”: a Black woman living and working in a white man’s world, where she endured racism and misogyny.

Mims was in her early 20s when she was hired by the Virginia Transit Company, a precursor to what would eventually become Hampton Roads Transit. I recently had the chance to speak with her daughter, Linnie S. Carter, Ph.D., APR . Carter says she always knew her mother was “a good mom.” It wasn’t until she got a little older that she realized just how “amazing” her mom really was.

Between 1963 and 1967, Mims recruited four other Black women to come work at VTC. Jane Doxie was one of them. Doxie was working at Bob’s Bus Stop, a coffee shop in Downtown Norfolk frequented by VTC bus drivers. That is how she met Mims. She started hearing about all the “good money” the women were making and decided to join in. Doxie stayed for nearly 20 years. She and Mims became lifelong friends.

Mims left VTC after nearly a decade, eventually making her way to Naval Station Norfolk where, according to her daughter, she also broke ground as the first Black woman heavy mobile equipment mechanic.

Carter said her mom never sugarcoated what it was like, living life as a Black woman in the 1960s and 70s, and raised her daughters accordingly. She taught them to have a strong moral compass, to know right from wrong. Her mom never coddled them, even when they were little. Carter says she told them as strong Black women they would go through life with a target on their back.

Mims was equal in strength and compassion. Carter said their home was often a safe space for friends and family. She recalls vividly her mom pulling the car over one day to help a woman who was being beaten up by two other women. She was badly bruised, and her clothes were torn. It made a lasting impression on Carter and her sister.

Mims passed away in June of last year from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 78. Carter says the grief over the loss of her mother has been immense. The only way she’s getting through it is by focusing not on how her mother died, but on how she lived: as a remarkable, history-making Black woman who blazed a trail in transportation.?

#gohrt #womenshistorymonth #blackhistory #transithistory #transportationhistory #remarkablewoman #trailblazer #pioneer