Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990 TAG: 9007010146
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Then he asked for a volunteer to carry what he said was the important placard. It said: "Take back your block."
"All over the country, neighborhoods are attempting to take back their block," Peery told a crowd of about 80 men, women and children. "That's what we're trying to do here: take back our blocks, take back our neighborhoods."
Then Peery led them on a brisk march against drugs through the Gainsboro neighborhood.
Peery, who has lived there for more than 40 years, is chairman of the city's crime-prevention program. The march was sponsored by the Rutherford Avenue Block Club and the Northwest Roanoke Improvement Council, with organizing help from Total Action Against Poverty.
The Gainsboro area, just a few blocks across the Norfolk and Western tracks from downtown Roanoke, is one of the city's oldest and proudest black neighborhoods. Lately, it has been vexed by open-air drug dealing, including gun-carrying youths peddling crack cocaine.
"It's changed so rapidly," Peery said. "And it's all changed because they're selling the drugs."
One marcher, a 63-year-old grandmother who asked that her name not be used, said she came because she was tired of seeing kids - some of them as young as 9 - selling dope. "They need to put 'em in jail and let 'em stay there."
A pudgy 6-year-old, the grandson of one of her neighbors, interrupted: "I don't need no drugs."
After a prayer, the long line of marchers headed up Rutherford Avenue toward Fifth Street.
As they began walking, one woman said: "We should be singing `We Shall Overcome Drugs' or something."
As the march stretched out, a group of young males toward the front chanted, "Stop Drugs Now." A group of girls behind them chanted, "Please don't shoot."
The march weaved 10 blocks through the neighborhood, passing some nearly new houses put up as an urban renewal project, along with older homes that are sagging and run-down. The people were chanting, "Up with hope, down with drugs," as they turned onto Harrison Avenue and passed two frame houses that were boarded up on the first floor and had broken windows on the second.
Down the block, Lelia and John Holland, who have lived on Harrison Avenue for 50 years, sat on their front porch and smiled and waved as the marchers strode by.
"I hope it will help some," Lelia Holland, 78, said after the people had passed. "It's so many around here that are selling."
Many people who watched from their porches joined in the marchers' chanting. Some stood and stared. A few retreated inside their houses.
It took about half an hour to complete the route. After coming to the end in front of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, the marchers stayed another 10 minutes and chanted and said slogans in singsong.
Peery then ended the rally with a warning for the children.
"They tell me that once you take it, then you're addicted to it," he said. "And the people who sell it, they don't care what it does to you. They're just interested in the money."
Afterward, Ebony Mitchell, 14, said she and her friends came after getting a call from her Girl Scout leader Friday night. She said she hoped the march had done some good, but "I think we're going to have to do a lot more."
Peery said he was surprised and pleased with the turnout, and he hoped to organize another march, perhaps in about six months. Next time, he said, he might even get a marching band.
by CNB