The Rambler’s latest Four Quadrants, One City Q&A, features a friendship built on a safe space.
Roanoke’s four quadrants reveal a deep and persistent divide. The city’s legacy of segregation continues to cast a long shadow, with access to education, job opportunities and even life expectancy varying widely depending on zip code.
In our monthly Q&A series, “Four Quadrants, One City,” The Rambler invites members of the community to reflect on what it means to live in a city shaped by a history of division. By sharing perspectives across generations, backgrounds and quadrants, we hope to spark honest conversations that are too often left unspoken.
This month, we sat down with two women who have spent decades having those very conversations. Lorraine Fleck and Marylen Harmon are longtime friends and founding members of Spectrum Women for Diversity, a group dedicated to building relationships across race…