
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995                   TAG: 9501310064
SECTION: STREET BY STREET                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

THE LOSS STILL STINGS

This special section comes three years after readers started telling reporter Mary Bishop, a relatively new Roanoker, the newspaper should write about the black neighborhoods that once stood north of downtown.

Old Northeast Roanoke's first reunion in 1991 provided the initial accounts of life in a part of Roanoke swept away years ago. Reginald Shareef, a Radford University professor who had studied urban renewal in Roanoke, and Dr. Walter Claytor, who has been collecting information on Gainsboro all his life, were resources for the story.

Bishop, the newspaper's minority affairs and neighborhoods writer, and staff photographer Cindy Pinkston gathered more material covering Gainsboro's unsuccessful 1992-93 campaign against two four-lane roads. For this section, Bishop interviewed more than 100 people, including scholars, government workers and 65 people who lived in the neighborhoods.

Old photographs came from Roanoke families, the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, the Roanoke Valley History Museum, the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, newspaper files and the Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection at Virginia Tech.

The section was produced by layout editor Tim Van Riper, staff artist Rob Lunsford, picture editor Keith Graham and Pinkston.

by CNB