Join us for a virtual talk by prize-winning journalist Mary Carter Bishop and historian Jordan Bell exploring the history of urban renewal in Roanoke and its impact on the city’s Black community. Beginning in 1955 and continuing throughout the remainder of the 20th century, much of Roanoke’s Black neighborhoods were destroyed by urban renewal projects to build an interstate, parking lots and a civic center. In 1995, Bishop wrote a groundbreaking history of Roanoke’s urban renewal efforts for the Roanoke Times titled “Street by Street, Block by Block: How Urban Renewal Uprooted Black Roanoke.” More recently, she has authored an Encyclopedia Virginia entry titled “Urban Renewal in Roanoke.”

Bishop is a retired journalist. While at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she was on a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Later, she was a Pulitzer finalist and winner of a George Polk Award for a Roanoke Times & World-News series on pesticide poisoning and fraud by exterminators. 

Bell is a Roanoke-based educator, historian and community advocate whose work centers on youth development, historic preservation and community storytelling. He is widely known for his efforts to preserve and share the history of Roanoke’s historic Gainsboro neighborhood.

This event is one of a series of programs highlighting stories of displacement in Virginia communities as part of the Library's programming related to the exhibition “House to Highway: Reclaiming a Community History,” on view through Feb. 28, 2026. Exhibition-related programming is provided with support from Virginia Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.

This is a free event, but registration is required. For more information, contact education@lva.virginia.gov