The Henry Street Festival was held in September had me thinking that this annual event continues to draw more people together across racial, religious, political and societal divides than any other throughout this valley. The key word being together. The Annual Local Colors Festival attracts more nations and diverse cultures but after the parade they pretty much remain within their respective individual cultural worlds.
Like its namesake, the Henry Street Festival brings diverse people, businesses and organizations together under the same tent or on the same performing arts and dance stage and promotes a more unified atmosphere.
In its heyday, Henry Street was the common denominator and primary unifier of Roanoke’s Black Community. Its major churches, First Baptist, High Street and Ebenezer AME among others, were all located just off Henry Street. Doctor and dentist offices, theatres, Brooks Pharmacy, dry cleaners hotels, night clubs, restaurants and The Roanoke Tribune itself were all on Henry Street or “The Yard” as it became affectionately referred to.
Also prior to legalized desegregation, legendary entertainers who performed in the area had to stay at the Dumas Hotel on Henry St. Among them such greats as Nat King Cole, Sam Cook, Duke Ellington and less known Buddy Johnson who wrote and recorded many popular tunes including “Since I Fell for You” written for and sung by his sister Ella, but made popular in later years by White artists.
Henry Street is not only an intricate part of Roanoke’s Black History, it’s the only part of Roanoke’s history that can claim such prominence. Over a half century she has been razed, raped and ravaged in the guise of “redevelopment” and left to die a natural death through benign neglect; not by accident but by well calculated design.
I remember a motto that I saw which read “Remembering our past–forging our future.” The revised local version is “Annihilating our past–forging our future.” Observe the trend.
As Florida and the Carolinas residents fight to salvage some part of their original heritage wiped out by Helene, Roanoke’s, Black and White community should stand tall against annihilating. Who is to benefit from this continuous game of political chicanery and annihilation of our past to forge our future?
Henry Street was not simply a Beale Street of bars as was once proposed. It was an entire cultural strip whose uniqueness would draw people from across town and across country today.
“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man,” still resonate the words of William Shakespeare.
The time is now to arise and resolve to dedicate ourselves to whatever will promote the highest interests of the whole city, the whole valley, the whole nation and the whole of human kind.
