Hidden History of Roanoke: Star City Stories

By Nelson Harris

Author Nelson Harris delves into the annals of history to uncover these marvelous and mostly unknown stories of the Star City of the South.

How did a Roanoke neighbor's secret upend North Carolina politics and why did a weeding scandal in Big Lick make front-page headlines in New York? These questions and many more are answered in this exciting volume of hidden stories and forgotten tales from the Star City. Discover why a Roanoker was found frozen in the North Atlantic and what Mother's Day crime and trial shocked the city in 1949. Meet the Black Cardinals, a semi-pro African American baseball team that played in the 1930s and '40s, and find out how a fistfight at Shenandoah Life helped save the company.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625840639

Nelson Harris

Local historian Nelson Harris is a native and former mayor of Roanoke. He has been the pastor of Heights Community Church since 1999 and is an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Western Community College. He is a past president of the Historical Society of Western Virginia, a columnist for the Roanoker magazine, and has been recognized by the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation for his research and advocacy of regional history. He is the author of fourteen books, including Downtown Roanoke, A History of Back Creek, Aviation in Roanoke and Hidden History of Roanoke.

Book preview

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