Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501310095
SECTION: STREET BY STREET PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Polio had kept Arthur Tyree in a wheelchair since his teens. He earned money fixing radios in their dining room.
When you walked up their steps, you could look through the front door and see him sitting at the antique table and buffet, fixing somebody's old Philco.
Olivee Tyree cleaned white people's houses by day and nursed by night at Burrell Memorial, a black hospital. She was grateful that the white families she cleaned for gave her milk and hand-me-down clothes for their daughter and two sons.
The Tyrees owned their cottage in Northeast Roanoke at 1109 41/2 St. They knew all their neighbors - Will Gaither, Eddie Wallace, Rulley Allen, George Smith. The kids rode their sleds down Diamond Hill and the steep slopes that surrounded their house.
Little grocery stores dotted the neighborhood. Selma Saker and Sadie Millehan each had one just around the corner.
Eventually, Olivee Tyree managed to add on to her house. "I enjoyed the house we had," she says. "Had it all fixed up, a fence around it and all painted."
In those days, she still had to drink from the "colored" water fountain at the Kress five-and-dime downtown; the newspaper wouldn't have run her daughter's engagement picture.
In 1955, when her elder son, Lewis, was about to go into the Army, the city announced it was going to take the Tyrees' house - and all their neighbors', too.
It didn't sound bad at first. "They promised they'd build new houses there and we could buy them back. They said they were going to fix it up and make it beautiful for the people."
Little did the Tyrees know that their home stood in the cross hairs of one of America's most massive social experiments. In Roanoke, it would force the migration of thousands of black men, women and children. It would tear down 1,600 of their homes. It would level more than 200 of their businesses and 24 of their churches.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB