When I was in fifth grade, my family moved back to the Southwest Hurt Park community. In many ways, I was returning to a place that had already been part of my childhood. Some of my earliest memories are of living directly across the street from Hurt Park Elementary School. My family eventually moved to Northwest Roanoke on Linwood Road, but years later we returned to Southwest and lived at 1111 Salem Avenue. That house is no longer standing, but years later I discovered something about it that made me look at my childhood differently.
While researching Dr. John Henry Pinkard, the well-known Black healer, herbalist, entrepreneur and landowner, I discovered that he had once owned the same house at 1111 Salem Avenue where my family lived. Pinkard owned multiple properties along Salem Avenue and operated his herbal business nearby. As a child, I had no idea I was living and playing around so much history.
When I returned to the Southwest Hurt Park community in fifth grade, it felt like a completely different world. I saw drug addiction, drug dealers, prostitution, poverty and struggle. I don’t want to romanticize those realities, but they were not the whole story. I also saw a community that was tough as nails. People knew each other, families looked out for one another, and children played throughout the neighborhood. People gathered on porches, sidewalks, basketball courts and street corners. We laughed together, struggled together and survived together.
I remember playing with my friends Gubbie and Archie around the Ferrell family’s house. Years later, I learned about that house’s connection to the childhood of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells would eventually transform modern medicine. Once again, we were children playing around history without realizing the significance of the ground beneath our feet.
As I got older, I became aware of how people outside the neighborhood viewed Hurt Park. It was often described as one of the toughest neighborhoods in Roanoke, and conversations usually centered on public housing, drugs, crime and poverty. Those things were real, but there was another Hurt Park that statistics and headlines could never fully capture. For many of us, Hurt Park was simply home.
The Hurt Park housing development was the heart and soul of the larger Southwest Hurt Park community. Families and friendships stretched across Patterson, Chapman, Rorer, Campbell, Day Avenue, Salem Avenue, Perry Park and the surrounding streets. Hurt Park was more than buildings. It was where family and friends gathered and relationships were built across generations.
Around 2005 and 2006, things changed. The Hurt Park housing development was redeveloped, and families were relocated throughout Roanoke, including places such as Lansdowne. Buildings changed, families moved and relationships were scattered across the city. In the process, I believe the Southwest Hurt Park community lost part of its center.
Today, in 2026, I can walk through the neighborhood and feel the difference. Hurt Park is still here. Salem Avenue is still here. But the tight-knit sense of family I remember feels different. In many ways, it seems like the Southwest Hurt Park community is searching for a new identity.
This is why I believe we need to think differently about revitalization. Revitalization cannot only mean new buildings, housing, businesses and increased property values. A community also has memory, culture, relationships and stories. If we improve the buildings while forgetting the people and history that gave a neighborhood its identity, we can redevelop a place without truly revitalizing the community.
The Southwest Hurt Park community has a powerful history. Dr. John Henry Pinkard built prosperity along Salem Avenue through healing, herbal medicine, entrepreneurship and property ownership. The community also carries connections to Henrietta Lacks, whose HeLa cells changed modern medicine. Within a neighborhood often remembered for poverty and struggle are also stories of healing, medicine, entrepreneurship, resilience and Black achievement.
Powerful things have always grown from this soil. Maybe Southwest Hurt Park doesn’t need someone to give it a new identity. Maybe part of that identity is already here, buried beneath displacement, demolition, redevelopment and stories that were never properly told.
I believe it is time for a resurrection of the Southwest Hurt Park community, not simply through buildings, but through spirit, history, culture, pride and connection. I want young people growing up here to know the history of the streets they walk every day. Revitalization should honor the people who were here before while creating opportunities for those who are here now.
I grew up here. I witnessed the struggle, but I also witnessed the strength. The heart and soul of the Southwest Hurt Park community may have been disrupted, but it has not disappeared. Maybe it is simply waiting for us to remember it and breathe life into it again.
