African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk & Western - Paperback

by Sheree Scarborough (Author)

Roanoke, Virginia, is one of America's great historic railroad centers. The Norfolk & Western Railway Company, now the Norfolk Southern Corporation, has been in Roanoke for over a century. Since the company has employed many of the city's African Americans, the two histories are intertwined. The lives of Roanoke's black railroad workers span the generations from Jim Crow segregation to the civil rights era to today's diverse corporate workforce. Older generations toiled through labor-intensive jobs such as janitors and track laborers, paving the way for younger African Americans to become engineers, conductors and executives. Join author Sheree Scarborough as she interviews Roanoke's African American railroad workers and chronicles stories that are a powerful testament of personal adversity, struggle and triumph on the rail.

Author Biography

Sheree Scarborough is a historian specializing in oral and public history. She has worked with various institutions over her over thirty-year career, including NASA/Johnson Space Center, the Library of Congress and the University of Texas Law School. The former director of the Frank Erwin Oral History Project in Austin, Sheree has written numerous publications on oral history and other topics. She has been the director for the Cotton to Silk Oral History Project in Roanoke, Virginia, most recently. Dr. DeLaney is an associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at Washington & Lee University. His research interests include comparative slavery in the Western hemisphere, African American history and civil rights. He is currently writing the story of school desegregation in four western Virginian counties. Dr. Sullivan III is an emeritus professor of English at East Carolina University and is on the summer faculty at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Over his thirty-four-year career, he has won numerous awards and grants, and has published over fifty articles and ten books in the fields of American folklore, fantasy and Celtic studies. He worked two summers as a gandy dancer on the Delwaware & Hudson Railway. Kegley is the editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, director emeritus of the society and retired business editor of the Roanoke Times. He has lived in Roanoke all of his adult life and volunteers in many local organizations. He was named citizen of the year by the Roanoke City Council in 2002 and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2001 from his alma mater Roanoke College.