ROANOKE, Va. – While America is celebrating its 250th anniversary, Roanoke is remembering Virginia Lee, a librarian whose protection of Black literature helped sustain Roanoke’s community through segregation and beyond.
Virginia Lee worked as a librarian at the Gainsboro Library after she moved back home in 1928, until her retirement in 1971.
The Gainsboro Library opened in 1921 as a library for Black residents. In fact, the library was only the second one for African Americans in Virginia at the time it opened…