THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411150499
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: IN THE CITIES
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
For $292,873, Norfolk has bought itself a new official history book - one that celebrates its warts as well as its glories.
``Norfolk: The First Four Centuries'' doesn't limit its report to ``old'' history. Latter chapters dredge recent wounds, including drug-related street crimes that ``turned parts of Norfolk into war zones.''
The book even discusses Nauticus, a pet project of the City Council, in terms of another highly touted waterfront tourist attraction, the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, which lost millions for its investors.
But just as the authors turned an unblinking eye towards history, City Hall hasn't seemed to flinch from the result: a 433-page excursion through many of Norfolk's darkest depths and seediest side streets, as well as an exhilirating run along its highest ramparts.
And there's lots of everyday people middling and muddling through life in between.
``We wanted an accurate and complete portrayal,'' said Mayor Paul D. Fraim, who had yet to see the book. ``It sounds like that's what we got.''
The book and the attitude of Norfolk's officialdom deserve praise.
The City Council's charge to the historians, Thomas C. Parramore, Peter C. Stewart and Tommy L. Bogger, was to write a readable and inclusive book, textured with people from all racial, ethnic and economic groupings.
And to be truthful.
One value in producing such a book is that it can help a city build a sense of community.
Norfolk is far removed from the days when it was a homogenous society (if, in fact, that ever existed, even in Colonial times).
Many of its cultures and neighborhoods have come and gone. If anything, transiency is a hallmark of a busy seaport and military base like Norfolk.
Modern urban renewal exacerbated the turnover, the authors suggest, cutting ``Norfolk into self-contained pockets, hurting downtown businesses and, perhaps, any genuine sense of community.''
Norfolk has tried many solutions. Community policing. Protecting neighborhoods with tighter zoning restrictions. Hiring consultants to develop high-minded visions.
Now, the city has rewritten its history, partly in hopes of cultivating a sense of kinship.
That kinship was something sorely missing in Norfolk's previous rendition of its history - a history dominated by white males.
The new book sprang from concerns raised in the mid-1980s by the Rev. John H. Foster, then a city councilman. Foster, who is black, observed that the earlier attempt, ``Norfolk: Historic Southern Port,'' by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, left out the contributions of African Americans, women and others. That book was published in 1931 and updated in 1962.
``Setting the racial record straighter was far more than a mission than simply updating things,'' said Parramore, who was the lead author. ``There was a sense that the old book was one of the things that helped make things bad.''
The new history includes many notable African Americans, the likes of Reconstruction-era City Councilman James E. Fuller, publisher P.B. Young, lawyers Victor Ashe and Joseph A. Jordan Jr., community activists Evelyn T. Butts and Beatrice Jennings. Here, too, are early but little-known heroes: Francis Drake, a barber, and Lemuel Bailey, a shoemaker, who each bought the freedom of fellow black citizens.
Among white women noted for achievements are Ann Plume Behan Herron, a martyr of the 1855 Yellow Fever epidemic; Irene Leache and Anna Cogswell Wood, turn-of-the-century educators, and Mary Jeffry Galt, founder of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.
Although, not as detailed, the authors also recognize an array of other ethnic groups. Sprinkled through the book are passages like this description of Norfolk life during World War I: ``Hofheimer's Shoe Store was farther down Main, with Near Eastern and Latin tenants interspersed among Greeks, Chinese, Italians and Jews in pre-Babel amiability.''
But to fulfill their assignment, the authors also explained the hostile settings in which the contributions of African Americans often were made.
That Norfolk has a long history of racial unfairness should not be a revelation, Parramore said. ``My faith, though, in airing these things, is that making things public again is, on the whole, better than trying to suppress them or forget them. Even if you cause some friction in the short run, it's better, in the long run, to make a clean breast of things, for a community to say, `we are aware of what happened,' a sort of mea culpa.''
Yet, this is not a white-male-bashing book. MEMO: An excerpt from the book accompanied this story. For complete text of
excerpt, please see microfilm.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Title: ``Norfolk: The First Four Centuries.'' (University Press
of Virginia, 433 pages, $20).
Authors: Thomas C. Parramore, professor emeritus, Meredith
College, Raleigh, N.C.; Peter C. Stewart, adjunct professor of
history, Radford College, and retired history professor, Old
Dominion University; and, Tommy L. Bogger, director of archives and
dean of library services and special collections, Norfolk State
University.
Project cost to Norfolk: $292,873, includes $55,000 subsidy to
publisher to keep book priced at $20. City will get 8 percent to 10
percent of royalties.
The authors will present the book to the Norfolk City Council at
2:30 p.m. Tuesday, at City Hall.
There will be a book signing with Thomas Parramore, 12:30-2 p.m.
Thursday at Prince Books and Coffee House, 109 E. Main St.,
Norfolk.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK HISTORY BOOK by CNB