A crowd of film fans turned out for the 37th annual Virginia Film Festival held recently in Charlottesville. One of the films featured was Uprooted, a documentary from the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism (VCIJ) at WHRO.
A panel and conversation with attendees followed the screening.
Uprooted is a documentary that explores the story of a university, seized land and a Black neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia. In the 1960s, residents wanted a thriving Black neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia, to keep growing. White city leaders wanted that land for a new college. Only one side had the power of eminent domain. The Johnsons, one of the last families in the neighborhood, tell the nearly forgotten story of a college expansion like the ones that broke up Black communities across Virginia and the country.
Brandi Kellam, an investigative journalist with the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism (VCIJ) at WHRO, and Louis Hansen, an editor and investigative journalist at VCIJ worked on the reporting series. Other contributors to the reporting include former ProPublica research reporter Gabriel Sandoval, Christopher Tyree of Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO, and Lisa Riordan Seville and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, both of ProPublica.
The film has garnered numerous awards including First Place in the documentary film category of Pictures of the Year International and the 2024 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award in the category of "Series of stories."
Read the reporting series that inspired the documentary.