ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 23, 1996 TAG: 9611250002
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: A Cuppa Joe
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
Reginald Shareef stood before the Harrison Museum of African-American Culture on a cool, sunny morning and remembered when it was the Harrison Elementary School.
He remembered the way someone would come to the top step at the front door and call the kids to class by ringing a big bell.
He remembered his mother, Maxine F. Thomas, standing at a third-floor window and speaking to him from her post in the school's library. Sometimes she just wanted to tell him something, and sometimes she would tell him to stop doing something he wasn't supposed to do.
Shareef remembered, too, how it felt to be safe and loved in Roanoke's African-American community, while awareness of the white side of Roanoke, south of the Norfolk and Western tracks, played in his mind like a radio in the next room.
Chronicle of a culture
A sense of separation pervades Shareef's new book, "The Roanoke Valley's African American Heritage: A Pictorial History." Its 30,000 words and 275 photographs provide a straightforward look at a culture too seldom included in other histories of our area.
It chronicles the lives of prominent people in education, medicine, law, religion, government, business, community institutions and social life. Some of the names are well-known even now. Many would have been better known, but for the times.
So, too, with the stories:
* In 1913, Isaac D. Burrell, a Roanoke doctor, developed gallbladder problems. Because local hospitals wouldn't treat him, he rode on a cot in a railway baggage car to Washington's Freedman's Hospital, where he died after surgery.
* Later that year, three of the city's 10 black doctors performed abdominal surgery in a home on Patton Avenue using instruments sterilized in a clothes boiler. The operation succeeded. The patient lived another 40 years.
* A year after that, Dr. Samuel Medley opened a small hospital for black residents, followed by the opening of a 10-bed facility on North Henry Street in 1915. It was named Burrell Memorial, in honor of Isaac Burrell.
* In 1906, Lylburn L. Downing installed a window honoring Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the Confederate general and his spiritual inspiration, in the church he pastored. It survives in the present-day Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.
* John Henry Pinkard began working in Franklin County at age 11. At 15, he was a supervisor for the Norfolk and Western Railway. He went to medical school and earned a fortune with his mail-order business in botanical remedies. He developed Pinkard's Court, a black residential area, and operated a service station and tourist camp.
Shareef, an associate professor of political science at Radford University, views his book as a beginning. He hopes it will encourage others to dig into the valley's African-American past.
To put it together, he sorted through hundreds of family and official photographs, church publications and news clippings. When he speaks about the book, listeners black and white tend to say, "Wow, I didn't know that."
Industrious, undeterred people
It depicts industrious people undeterred by a lack of recognition from the majority population.
Shareef said his father, Elmer Thomas, missed 17 days in the 43 years he worked for the railroad. He was as tough as a rusted spike, but more than toughness took him to work day after day. He had one of the best jobs a black man in Roanoke could have. If he lost it, he would never find another like it.
The Thomases cautioned their children against anything that would land them in court and warned them that, to get ahead, they would have to be twice as good as their white counterparts.
Memories of those days underlie much of the debating between Roanoke's black residents and city officials over matters like Gainsboro and Henry Street, Shareef said. The history is theirs. If an opportunity exists to preserve and capitalize on it, then they should be included.
The wounds of injustice live long.
"We have to give legitimacy to these experiences," he said.
The book is available at the Harrison Museum for $34.95 plus tax. Limited leather-bound editions are $75.
What's your story? Give me a call at 981-3256, or send a letter to P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010-2491. Or e-mail me at kenn@roanoke.infi.net.
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