Root Shock at Twenty: Reflections from Roanoke

Abstract

The federal Housing Act of 1949 funded 'urban renewal', a programme to clear urban areas that White-run local governments deemed 'slums'. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Roanoke joined hundreds of other American cities in levelling old neighbourhoods, usually home to Black citizens and other minorities. In this paper I recount my reporting in the early 1990s on the displacement of residents from neighbourhoods such as Northeast and adjacent Gainsboro. The city destroyed some 1,600 homes, twenty-four churches, Roanoke's first post office, historic schools and around 200 small businesses. All were in one of the only sections where authorities allowed Black people to live. In scores of interviews people spoke longingly of life in their destroyed neighbourhoods and detailed an enduring distrust of their government and the local media that supported the clearances without reporting the consequences. After reading a copy of my 1995 report on how urban renewal uprooted Black Roanoke, Dr Mindy Fullilove visited the city, which would become a central case in Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What Can We Do About It. Today, Roanoke is still recovering from the devastation of urban renewal. Residents repeatedly evoke this history as they scrutinize contemporary redevelopment plans.