“Uprooted” Explores How University Expansion and Eminent Domain Led to Black Land Loss

The short documentary “Uprooted” examines a Black community’s decadeslong battle to hold onto their land as city officials wielded eminent domain to establish and expand Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.

 By Brandi Kellam, Christopher Tyree and Louis Hansen

Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO

Lisa Riordan Seville and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons

ProPublica

This video was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network and Co-published with Propublica.

In the 1960s, when Newport News, Virginia, remained a largely segregated city, longtime Black residents wanted to expand their neighborhood, offering former farmland as plots to other middle-class families looking to build homes.

The city had other plans. 

In a deliberate attempt to halt that growth, white city officials selected that same land as the location for a new college — and they wielded the power of eminent domain to make it happen. If the landowners didn’t want to sell, the city could take it. 

In “Uprooted,” a documentary short, James and Barbara Johnson tell the story of their beloved neighborhood, which was displaced by the creation and expansion of what is now Christopher Newport University. 

What happened in Newport News is by no means unique. In Chicago, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Virginia, and other cities across the nation, Black communities have been uprooted by colleges and universities, which were encouraged by federal policies that promoted the expansion of higher education at the expense of the surrounding neighborhoods. It is a legacy the country is only beginning to confront. 

Reach the film makers: brandi.kellam@vcij.org, chris.tyree@vcij.org, and louis.hansen@vcij.org.