Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 13, 1992 TAG: 9201130133
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VIRGINIA LEE, LITERACY PIONEER, DIES AT 82
Virginia Y. Lee was remembered Sunday as a champion for literacy and a pioneer of black history education in Roanoke.Lee died Saturday at Friendship Manor nursing home after a long illness.
For more than four decades as librarian at Roanoke's Gainsboro branch library, she gathered books, magazines, newspaper articles, photographs and other items on black history.
In 1982, the collection, which contains 4,000 volumes, was dedicated and named in honor of Lee. The collection, housed at the Gainsboro library, includes materials on nationally known black authors as well as the early history of blacks in Roanoke.
"She believed in education," said Virginia Reeves, who was raised by Lee after Reeves' parents died. "She believed that reading and education were among the keys to success."
Lee, a Roanoke native, became interested in black studies while a student at Hampton Institute, where she majored in library science. There, she worked with the college's special collection on black history.
She took a librarian's job in Alabama after finishing college, but returned to Roanoke to take care of her parents when they became ill.
She taught at the old Gilmer school in 1927 before becoming the librarian at Gainsboro the next year. She retired in 1971.
Lee put together the collection of black history materials almost single-handedly, often working extra hours for no pay.
Besides the long hours, she risked her job at one point to gather the materials.
She started the collection in 1928, long before the end of segregation and the acknowledgment of accomplishments of blacks. When she put up a display of some of those accomplishments at the library, city officials warned her to "slow the pace" of the displays.
Later, she was told that she could either stop collecting and displaying the black-history materials or look for another job.
"I said that if it was going to cost me my job, that is the way it would have to be," she said in a 1982 interview. "I said that blacks needed accurate and precise information on their history."
Shortly afterward, she got the word from city hall that she could proceed.
Reeves said Lee would often put together reading clubs at the library and would offer small prizes to children who read.
"She believed in helping children," Reeves said. "She was ahead of her time in believing in literacy."
Memo: Correction