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A local historian moves region’s story forward in a comprehensive new book.
When Nelson Harris was considering his next local history project, he knew he wanted a change from his 13 previous books. This work would dig deeper and cast wider than titles like: “Downtown Roanoke,” “Greater Raleigh Court,” “Images of Rail: Norfolk & Western Railway” and “Aviation in Roanoke.”
So he reached out to Roanoke’s director of libraries, Shelia Umberger. She looked to the Roanoke Public Library Foundation to provide funds to publish the book. She also lent Harris a microfilm reader and gave him access to the library system’s historical collection at the Virginia Room, where Nelson proceeded to read every copy of The Roanoke Times from January 1, 1940 to January 1, 1950.
None of them imagined the book would grow to 652 pages, with two appendices and some 300 archival photos. Or that it would take six years to complete.
In early March, The Roanoke Valley in the 1940s was published by The History Press. For now, it’s on sale only at rplfstore.org and Roanoke’s city branch libraries. Later in the summer, it will be available from local and online booksellers.
“It’s a bit of a tome,” Harris says with a chuckle.
It’s also a comprehensive look at a decade in Roanoke that had never been extensively researched. Historian Raymond Barnes wrote the book on Roanoke’s past. But it was published in 1968 and does not include events after 1940. Harris aims to move Roanoke’s story forward.
For the Roanoke Valley, the 1940s was a decade of progress and vision, an era in which the foundation was laid for the region’s future, Harris explains.
The 1940s saw the creation of Carvins Cove Reservoir as Roanoke’s primary water supply, the expansion of the airport from a local landing strip to a regional transportation hub, the invention of the most powerful steam engines in the world — the J-Class locomotives, the building of Victory Stadium, the construction of the Roanoke Star, the start of the region’s civil rights movement, the end of World War II, the advent of drive-in movie theaters and the final days of the city’s streetcars.
The book documents local performances by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, the birth of the Roanoke Red Sox baseball team, the building of the Shenandoah Life Building off Brambleton Avenue, as well as the bold stance taken by Sarah Craig in 1941 to refuse to sit at the back of a city bus.
The project walks chronologically through the decade, one chapter per year. Each chapter begins with January 1 births and continues with happenings big and small throughout the Roanoke Valley. Business openings. Criminal trials. City council meetings. School principal resignations. Movie auditions. Grand Ole Opry performers shining from local stages.
“The basic thrust is to provide information,” says Harris. “But because of the breadth of coverage of the decade, I think people will find it not a dry reference work. It’s filled with so many anecdotes, I think readers will really find it interesting.”
The end of the book features a seven-page list of every Roanoke Valley casualty of World War II. The number of names is startling.
The second appendix is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the region. It begins with the laying of the cornerstone of Carver School in Salem. And ends with an appeals court ruling determining that Botetourt County native and Olympic Gold Medal boxer Norvel Lee was not subject to a fine for refusing to change his seat from a “whites only” section of a Chesapeake and Ohio railway passenger train.
“Most of us tend to think of the civil rights movement as happening around the mid-50s and gaining steam on into the 60s,” Harris says. “We really don’t think of so much happening in the 1940s, even before World War II.”
Harris, 55, is pastor of Heights Community Church in Grandin Village, adjunct faculty member at Virginia Western Community College, and a native and former mayor of Roanoke City.
If all goes according to plan, Harris’s history of the ’40s will not be his last big look at the region. He’s set his sights on a similar project covering the 1950s.
“That would certainly be my hope.”
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