Prize-winning journalist Mary Carter Bishop and historian Jordan Bell will present a noon virtual talk on Thursday, Jan. 22 about the history of urban renewal in Roanoke and its impact on the city’s Black community. Bishop authored the groundbreaking 1995 Roanoke Times’ special section “Street by Street, Block by Block: How Urban Renewal Uprooted Black Roanoke.” Bell is a Roanoke-based educator, historian and community advocate. Registration is required at https://lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/15784638.

 

Author and professor Katrina M. Powell will present a noon virtual talk on Thursday, Feb. 5 about the families whose homes were displaced through eminent domain by the Shenandoah National Park’s construction in the 1930s. Powell is an alumni distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech and founding director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies. She has written two books on the displacement of families from Shenandoah National Park. Registration is required at https://lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/15784706.

 

A screening of the short documentary film “Uprooted” will be held on March 5 at 6 p.m., followed by a discussion with director Brandi Kellam and a panel of guests. The film explores a Black community’s decades-long battle to retain its land as officials in Newport News established and expanded Christopher Newport University. The discussion panel includes Kellam; Robert K. Nelson, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond; LaToya Gray-Sparks, community outreach coordinator for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; and Dwayne Johnson, a community member whose parents, James and Barbara Johnson, are featured in the film and still own one of the five remaining homes in the former Black community. Registration is required at https://lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/16151474.

 

Exhibition-related programming is provided with support from Virginia Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.

 

Related images can be found at this link:

 

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