Guest Commentary
Open Letter to my Community…
Martin D. Jeffrey, Gainsboro Homeowner
I’m willing to bet that many of you reading this letter have had that question posed to you concerning Black history—slavery—and yes, Henry Street. I thought that I might share with you a possible response that you could share with the next person to ask such a simple question.
I made a decision to move here over 30 years ago. I know that my being here is providential. There have been a lot of moments and opportunities that have helped me to know this. And one of the most purpose revealing moments for me came recently. I have been spending the past couple of months researching the history of Gainsboro, Henry Street and the Black community and the impact of the City’s “urban renewal” efforts. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of water under that bridge! However, it has been said “…if we insist on ignoring the lessons of history then we are doomed to repeat them…” And so we do.
Out of all that I have learned recently and that includes a lot that I understood from 20 years of community organizing, development and activism is that it is in the core truth we find opportunity. In the core truth of what happened we can find unity, resolution and even redemption. It is in that spirit that I am writing this letter to all of you.
The core truth of Roanoke’s history of its Black community and what this City did to it can be summed up in these numbers:
- Over 900 Families displaced—many were homeowners who were forced to be public housing tenants because they only received pennies on the dollar for their homes for which the city taxed them at a price much higher than the price used to calculate settlement.
- 25 Church Congregations were forced to abandon their Houses of Faith—Temples of God—some of those structures were wonderful and historic—at least one of them was brand new (Greater Mt. Zion Baptist).
- 5 Neighborhood schools that represented the core of the educational construct and resources for the community.
- 270 Businesses whose primary customer base was gutted, removed and dislocated resulting in the inevitable failing of most of those businesses (YMCA, drugstores, fire station, ice cream parlor, cleaners, beauty shops, barbershops, doctors, lawyers, dentists. etc.…)
- 1200 Graves of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and friends were desecrated—dug up and removed and placed in a mass grave in the City’s pauper cemetery miles outside of town and access for many of the relatives who were moved even further across the city into public housing. So the City could build a bigger road (460 between 581 and Williamson Rd.).
Churches (a community’s Spirit), Housing stock (a community’s wealth/inheritance), Schools (a community’s knowledge), Businesses (a community’s legacy) and Graves (a community’s heart), these are the essential ingredients to a thriving and complete community experience. Without any one of these a community would be critically disadvantaged. Remove all of them and a community is decimated. The spiritual, domestic, educational, economical and psychological implications of such an occurrence would reverberate through generations.
These numbers tell a story of a systematic dismantling of a community and of a people. The damage shows up for years in economic distress, unemployment rates, low median income rates, achievement gaps, and moral crisis among the young and a general loss of a sense of security that leads to acts of desperation and compromise.
Henry Street today is a monument to the possibilities of a people and the institutional indifference and fear others have of those possibilities. It is telling to know that Roanoke’s urban renewal plans and actions were generated at the same time that the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court decision came down that ordered the integration of all schools; it also occurred at the same time as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the subsequent Busing decision. “City officials strongly resisted integrating the school (from 1948 to 1974”, (Old Dominion: New Commonwealth, The History of Virginia 1607-2007 (All Deliberate Delay), 2007) These decisions would have required white students to be bused to schools in Gainsboro and NE. The City’s urban renewal scheme conveniently demolished 5 of those schools they would have attended in the Black community.
In the article “All Deliberate Delay: Integrating the Star City of the South”(an excerpt from “Old Dominion, New Commonwealth” there appeared a reference that read, “…the Roanoke Times threatened that the [white] South might enact economic retribution against African Americans for pushing school integration. Referring to African Americans: “he knows that to force himself into a situation where he is not acceptable may prove more costly than profitable. This economic threat was clear.” (“Editorial: The Latest Move By the NAACP,” Roanoke Times, July 17, 1956).
It seems that the perfect storm of institutional racism, shifting federal public policy and economic opportunism (the City’s plan to take land from Blacks and give it to White business interests) all came together in the storm that tore through the Gainsboro, NE, Kimball and Commonwealth neighborhoods, aka black Roanoke.
It matters because it is a matter of our spirit, minds, our hearts and our inheritance. The bulldozers and the institutions and policies they represented literally robbed our community and our children of the things that matter most. It robbed them of their heritage, and their community. It matters because those same policies continue to rob our children of that heritage, and community. The latest is the Higher Education Center plan to take more of Henry Street for its own designs with little regard for Gainsboro’s past or its future.
On this Tuesday following Martin Luther King’s birthday (January 20) at 7:00 p.m., Roanoke City Council will decide whether to ignore the Gainsboro Neighborhood Development Plan (which City Council unanimously endorsed in 2003) in favor yet again of business interests akin to that that facilitated the destruction of the business legacy and the community that once inhabited Henry Street. Whether to continue this unholy pattern of indifference and injustice—taking from some and giving it to others for pennies on the dollar. The current City Council leadership were not in place then but continue to enjoy the fruit of what others did in the form of real estate holdings, tax revenues from businesses that sit on land taken from the Black community and other benefits. Join the residents of Gainsboro at this City Council Public Hearing on this decision. It Matters because Black history was built on top of White history that was built on top of Native–Indian history. We Are One!
