Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501310090
SECTION: STREET BY STREET PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Lewis Lionberger, a contractor who began his three decades on the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority board around 1954, said the city did intend to build houses there. His memory was cloudy on why that wasn't done.
"I guess the highway coming through there, for one," he said of Interstate 581, built in the mid-1960s.
Yes, it was the interstate that had the biggest impact on the Commonwealth project, said businessman Fred Mangus, on the authority's board 39 years. "It changed the whole purpose of it."
When residents learned they would be shut out of their old neighborhood forever, "We were criticized quite severely for that, and justifiably, I think," Mangus said. "But it was out of our hands," because the highway had to go somewhere.
As for residents, "I think we treated them as fairly as we could."
One by one, Olivee Tyree watched the houses go. Her church, Morning Star Baptist, was demolished.
Where her house stood is now the Holiday Inn on Orange Avenue.
At first, she said, the city was going to pay her nothing. She had spent $2,500 for her house, paying it off gradually. She still owed on a loan for the addition she had built for her children.
Driven out of her home and with no money, Olivee Tyree could not get a loan for another one. Finally, she borrowed $1,200 from her mother-in-law, who inherited a little money when another son died in Detroit. With that, Tyree got a loan on the cheapest house she could find, at 424 14th St. N.W. She got it from whites who were fleeing as black families poured across the old color line and farther into Northwest.
Finally, the housing authority paid her $2,200. She repaid her mother-in-law, paid off the loan for the addition, and paid back her husband's disability benefits that the government was disputing.
Tyree, now 73, was in debt for 20 years to pay the remaining cost of her second house. She then moved to Hanover Avenue, where she now operates Tyree's Home for Adults.
The children and grandchildren of people driven out of Northeast are still in public housing, even though the housing authority's objective, as voiced by former director Roy Henley in 1960, was to "get them in here, get them on their feet and get them out."
Kathy Alexander was a baby in the mid-1950s when her parents were forced out of their home on Raleigh Avenue Northeast and into the Lincoln Terrace project. Now 37, she still lives in the apartment at 1818 Dunbar St. that her parents, now dead, moved her into as a child.
Mattie Williams, 80, moved into Lincoln Terrace 40 years ago from a rental house. The project's apartments were shiny and new, unlike the old Northeast house with its toilet on the back porch. "Of course, we couldn't do no better, I don't think."
One of the last people to leave Northeast was Kathleen Vaughn Ross, former secretary at Northeast's Gilmer Elementary School.
For years, she refused to give up the house at 510 Third St. N.E. that her parents had moved into in 1927. She insists Northeast was no slum.
"That's a lie. Now, Northeast had some undesirable sections just like every neighborhood has, but there were nice residences in Northeast, just like in Southwest or any part of Roanoke. They had nice homes, they had real nice homes, and were uprooted from it."
She watched her neighbors move out, and lose their next homes because they couldn't afford the payments in more expensive Northwest. She and others claim whites jacked up prices because they knew displaced blacks had nowhere else to go. "Some of the older residents never did ever get established," she said. "They got sick; they died."
Ross wouldn't budge until she got enough money for her home to afford her next one. "They called me the feisty one, that's what they called me. I didn't care. It really irritated me how they were trying to move you around, shove you around. I'm just glad I had enough grit in me not to give in. Nobody gave it to me," she said of her old house, "and I wasn't going to give it to them."
Many Roanokers, though, were glad to see Northeast go.
"The value of slum clearance to the community is fairly well evidenced for any who take the trouble to visit the cleared-off area in Northeast," the World-News editorialized in 1957.
"It has wiped out a slovenly and unsightly approach to the city's heart and is opening up not only new thoroughfares but is providing the beginning of an attractive new business center for our colored population."
The city built its Civic Center around Kathleen Ross, who stayed in her home until 1981. About 35 parking spaces behind the Civic Center cover the spot where she lived.
Where Olivee Tyree, Kathy Alexander, Mattie Williams and their friends once lived is now I-581, a Holiday Inn, a Days Inn, a Thrifty Inn, a McDonald's, Magic City Ford, the city's main post office, Roanoke Gas Co., a Chevron station, Branch Highways Inc., Adams Construction, the American Automobile Association of Virginia, the Norfolk Southern Credit Union and a dozen other industries and offices.
by CNB