A Cinderella Story

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published October 18, 2013 and can be found here.

   Meet Victor Jackson. The year is 1918 and Victor has no family. He's an orphan at the Dorsey Home for Dependent Colored Children. You might say the cards are stacked against Victor. But he doesn't mind...

   Isabella and Thomas Dorsey started this orphanage in 1917 at their three-bedroom house on     Dr. Samuel McCree Way

near Reynolds Street. The orphanage quickly grew and moved to the Sea Breeze area, but a few white neighbors didn't like having black children nearby. And so the Dorsey Home was forced to move to some farmland in Brighton (where     McQuaid Jesuit High School

is today).

   Yes, the world should be a pretty frightening place for little Victor. But he doesn't mind. He's got his friends... That's Eddie to the left of Victor. And Elizabeth & Charlie on his right.

These guys are Victor's family. Good family.

   He's also picked up some skills along the way. For starters, he can carve a pretty awesome jack-o-lantern.

   And all the kindness and care that Isabella & Thomas Dorsey have showed him will pay untold dividends. One day Victor Jackson will grow up to become the Recreational Supervisor for the City of Rochester.