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Maryland Police Solve 1979 Murder of Ambitious Young Career Woman
Vickie Belk had been flying high, only to have her life brutally cut short — but investigators now know who did it.
It was August 1979, and Vickie Belk from Alexandria in Virginia was living a life most women her age could scarcely dream of. At 28, she was a management analyst for the US Department of Agriculture in Washington DC, and she had already been the first in her family to graduate from college.
She also had a seven-year-old son, whom she was raising single-handedly while juggling her career. This would be progressive at the time for any female — but for a black woman, it was nothing short of remarkable.
But Vickie had had a good example to draw inspiration from. When she was a third-grader in 1960, her mother had been one of the plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit that helped to pave the way for the desegregation of public schools.
As a result, Vickie and her younger sister Judy were among the first group of four black pupils to walk into classes at a previously all-white school, something that must have been as daunting as it was exhilarating. It undoubtedly set the tone for the rest of her life as she forged a career in the federal government.
