Resurrecting a Troubling Legacy in Higher Ed

In April 2021, I was searching for a local journalism story tied to racial inequality, inspired by my experience covering the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis the year before. 

With the support of Columbia University’s Lipman Fellowship, I turned my attention to communities near where I grew up in Virginia. In conversation with a university alumnus, I learned that Christopher Newport University’s (CNU) campus in Newport News, Virginia had been built on land that was once home to a thriving Black middle-class community. I was shocked to uncover this history—especially since I had frequently visited the university as a high school athlete competing in the area. 

Even more surprising, the alumnus mentioned that several houses from that community were still standing, scattered around the campus.  A follow-up conversation with a university historian further fueled my curiosity as I discovered that research for the university’s published history omitted accounts of living residents from the community. Driven to learn more, I began knocking on doors.

One of those doors belonged to James and Barbara Johnson, two of the last remaining residents living on the edge of the university grounds. James had inherited some of his family land to build a home when he and Barbara married in the 1960s. The house was part of an approximately 30-acre purchase by his grandfather in the early 1900s, though most of it is now under university ownership.

I sat with James and Barbara at their dining room table for several hours as James shared details about his family’s history and the original plans for the land in the late 1950s before much of it was seized to establish CNU’s campus. Those plans included subdividing it and offering lots to other middle-class Black families who had limited options for purchasing homes due to segregation and housing discrimination at the time. 

As we discussed more of the neighborhood’s history, James unveiled one of his most cherished possessions: a collection of documents, including albums and notebooks filled with his photos of the demolished houses, civil engineering maps with plans to divide his family’s land, and news clippings spanning several decades. At that moment, I realized that while city and university officials continued to encroach on the community, James had quietly collected evidence chronicling the gradual destruction of his community.

Over the next year, I came to know James and the history of the community. I made a more unsettling discovery: While the university had acknowledged the origins of its campus, there was a gap in the narrative that obscured its role in further dismantling the community.

This discovery launched a multi-story investigation, revealing the university’s role in displacing Black residents. The resulting collaborative project—partnering with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO—examined Christopher Newport University’s role in displacing a once-thriving Black community, and more broadly, how American colleges have done the same across the country. 

The reporting required an in-depth exploration of archival research and personal narratives, utilizing techniques that allowed us to connect the dots between documents and build trust with key sources. This approach not only ensured the authenticity of the community’s history but also highlighted important issues of accountability.

Building Trust to Source Narratives

Building trust with impacted families was a gradual process — in some cases, it took months, while in others it took a year or more. Many, like the Johnsons, were initially wary and suspicious of reporting questions and motives for revisiting what they saw as a painful chapter of their past.

My relationship with James and Barbara Johnson helped ease concerns among other current and former residents. Other key approaches to building trust included:

• clear, transparent communication about the reporting process
• being flexible with scheduling and conducting interviews

When speaking with residents or descendants, I made it clear that my interest was in truly capturing the essence of their neighborhood and that I was committed to learning their history in-depth. I spent hours sitting at dining room tables or on living room couches, comparing notes from personal accounts that ultimately helped shape a narrative using the experiences of those from the community. 

Each story revealed not only a deeply shared sense of loss, but also provided a critical human dimension to the broader investigation.

Creating a Timeline With Archival Records

Additionally, our investigative process relied on exhaustive research, including combing through public records, city council minutes, land records dating back to the 1800s, and census data. We also turned to aerial mapping tools to visualize how CNU’s campus gradually expanded into the surrounding Black community. 

In addition to documents provided by sources, we pieced together historical records to depict the scale of those affected by the university’s expansion. These documents also shed light on the neighborhood’s social fabric, showing how the community members were connected to one another, as well as detailing former ownership and the nature in which properties were acquired by the university. 

News articles from the 1960s period posed a challenge, as they rarely identified property owners by name. However, the creation of a comprehensive database utilizing the available historical records, mapped the rise and fall of the community and significantly strengthened our reporting.

Navigating FOIA Challenges

An unexpected challenge arose when we began requesting documents from the university itself. 

A Freedom of Information Act request to access documents from the recently retired university president, Paul Trible, was denied  due to an exemption in Virginia’s public records law that protects the working papers and correspondence of university presidents from disclosure. Most of the remaining homes in the community were acquired during the former president’s 26-year tenure. Without his communications, many questions about the university’s decision-making process remained unanswered. 

Despite this setback, source documents and land records helped fill in some of the gaps. 

Additionally, we were able to interview Trible’s predecessor, Dr. Anthony Santoro, who revealed that city leaders in the 1960s had expressed a desire to “erase the Black spot” that was the Shoe Lane neighborhood. This explosive quote became the centerpiece of our reporting, underscoring the racial motivations behind the university’s expansion.

Making an Impact in Communities 

Investigating the legacy of eminent domain and its continuing effects on communities can reveal powerful, untold stories. 

In our case, the reporting led to a broader reckoning in Virginia. State legislation was introduced to examine how public universities across the state have displaced Black communities. The commission that was ultimately formed also invited a presentation of our reporting from the series during its first hearing on the issue.  Additionally, CNU partnered with the city of Newport News to explore the impact of its expansion by launching a joint task force. The reporting also gave voice to families in Newport News and beyond. Emails poured in from readers, including from descendants of uprooted families. Families from the Shoe Lane community in Newport News became more visible, speaking out at a forum held on Christopher Newport’s campus while others called directly to express gratitude for the reporting. 

Through a meticulous blend of trust-building, thorough historical research, and overcoming institutional roadblocks, we were able to shed light on an often-overlooked chapter of history. Combining narratives with archival documents and public records allowed us to reconstruct the full scope of the community’s displacement. 

Through our investigation, we not only sparked new conversations on campus but also validated the experience of a nearly forgotten community.