Beginning in 1955 and continuing throughout the remainder of the 20th century, much of Roanoke’s Black neighborhoods were destroyed by urban renewal projects to build an interstate, parking lots and a civic center. In 1995, Bishop wrote a groundbreaking history of Roanoke’s urban renewal efforts for the Roanoke Times titled “Street by Street, Block by Block: How Urban Renewal Uprooted Black Roanoke.” More recently, she has authored an Encyclopedia Virginia entry titled “Urban Renewal in Roanoke.”
Bishop is a retired journalist. While at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she was on a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Later, she was a Pulitzer finalist and winner of a George Polk Award for a Roanoke Times & World-News series on pesticide poisoning and fraud by exterminators.
This event is one of a series of programs highlighting stories of displacement in Virginia communities as part of the Library of Virginia's programming related to the exhibition “House to Highway: Reclaiming a Community History”. Exhibition-related programming is provided with support from Virginia Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.
This is a free event, but registration is required. For more information, contact education@lva.virginia.gov
