After serving two years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia during the 1960s, Kern became interested in black history while he earned a doctoral degree in Colonial history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Roanoke, he taught black history at Hollins University until 2008, when his wife, Sandra, died. This week in his office, there were also boxes with his research printed on acid-free paper so that 35 of his articles can be archived in the Roanoke Public Library's Virginia Room. The library's archivist, Alicia Sell, said his work has helped many people in the region understand their heritage. "A lot of researchers now want to sit down at a computer and have the answers pop up," Sell said. "Dr. Kern goes through original records like census data and school board minutes to pull information and brings new light others don't to race relations." One of his former Hollins students, Arleen Ollie, later wrote "African American History in Roanoke City: A Compilation of Records." "John is much like one of the treasures he has resurrected," she said. "If his job is not filled, a lot of the historic houses, buildings, facts of Southwest Virginia will not be recorded." After retiring, Kern said he will keep researching, including a project that looks at the racially integrated work force of Bassett Furniture in Henry County. In mid-April, he will speak in Newport News at a conference on Jim Crow in Virginia.
Tunisia RPCV John Kern retiring as Black History Professor at Hollins University
Bastion of history: Roanoke historian John Kern retiring
John Kern has strived to protect Southwest Virginia landmarks for future generations.
By Jorge Valencia
Caption: John Kern, regional director for Virginia's Department of Historic Resources, will retire Friday after more than 20 years with the department. Kern has been instrumental in placing area landmarks on state and national registries. Photo: Jared Soares, The Roanoke Times
John Kern, regional director for Virginia's Department of Historic Resources, will retire Friday after more than 20 years with the department. Kern has been instrumental in placing area landmarks on state and national registries.
Historian John Kern was cruising down Roanoke's Wells Avenue, shaking his hands in the air.
"Look at this! There's nothing here! Most of it is gone!"
The volume of his voice rose Monday afternoon as he rode past a historic black neighborhood that from the 1920s to the 1950s was home to schools, stores and a big movie theater.
Nowadays in the Gainsboro district, there's a lot of pavement rolling down Wells Avenue, houses sagging on Gilmer Avenue and patches of grass taking up space on Henry Street.
"The community has been so decimated that a lot of the history is being lost," Kern said.
Now, the community is losing one of its most low-profile public servants, a fervent steward of history. Kern, regional director for Virginia's Department of Historic Resources, is retiring Friday.
Since 1989, this trim, 70-year-old Iowa native has unearthed a great deal of Southwest Virginia history that previously had been ignored, including that of the region's black communities.
There have been many accomplishments, including 2005's successful nomination of the Historic Gainsboro District to the National Register of Historic Places, which provides safeguards and tax benefits for the neighborhood.
But after Friday, there are questions about who will direct the state's historic research in the region, meet with local governments and people considering their heritage, and write nominations to state and national registries. In a time of budget freezes -- and amid a General Assembly session -- that job is not yet being filled.
"Until we have an idea of what the governor is going to do, we're not going to fill positions," said Kern's boss, Bob Carter, director of the Community Services Division for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Kern, whose father was a history professor and mother an English professor at the University of Iowa, came to Roanoke to head what was a newly created office. Mike Pulice, an architectural historian, and Tom Klatka, an archeologist, joined him.
Over the years, the office was involved in nominating dozens of historic sites and neighborhoods from Southwest Virginia to state and national registries.
They unveiled the plaque for the Pearisburg Downtown Historic District's placement on the Virginia registry in 1992; they found that on the eve of the Civil War, more than a third of Roanoke's residents were slaves; and they discovered that the bones that workers building the Rockbridge County Courthouse found in 2008 were the remains of a 19th century Anglo-American female.
On his last days at his office in Roanoke's Buena Vista Recreation Center, an 1800s house that a wealthy furnace owner built for his wife and nine children, Kern's office was littered with paper-stuffed folders and books:
"The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925" by Herbert Gutman. ("THE book on slavery," Kern said. "THE book.")
And Henry Wiencek's "The Hairstons," about the black and white Hairstons from Southside Virginia. ("It's a controversial book," he explained. "There are two sides and then facets; just like a family reunion.")
After serving two years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia during the 1960s, Kern became interested in black history while he earned a doctoral degree in Colonial history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Roanoke, he taught black history at Hollins University until 2008, when his wife, Sandra, died.
This week in his office, there were also boxes with his research printed on acid-free paper so that 35 of his articles can be archived in the Roanoke Public Library's Virginia Room. The library's archivist, Alicia Sell, said his work has helped many people in the region understand their heritage.
"A lot of researchers now want to sit down at a computer and have the answers pop up," Sell said. "Dr. Kern goes through original records like census data and school board minutes to pull information and brings new light others don't to race relations."
One of his former Hollins students, Arleen Ollie, later wrote "African American History in Roanoke City: A Compilation of Records."
"John is much like one of the treasures he has resurrected," she said. "If his job is not filled, a lot of the historic houses, buildings, facts of Southwest Virginia will not be recorded."
After retiring, Kern said he will keep researching, including a project that looks at the racially integrated work force of Bassett Furniture in Henry County. In mid-April, he will speak in Newport News at a conference on Jim Crow in Virginia.
Out in the Gainsboro district on Monday afternoon, Kern rode past Henry Street. Indeed, many historic buildings were lost to urban renewal, but some, such as the Roanoke Higher Education Center and the Dumas Center for Artistic & Cultural Development, are preserved.
Outside of 405 Gilmer Ave. N.W., he saw a girl riding a bicycle and asked if she knew about the Dudleys, the family of the country's first black ambassador, who grew up in that house.
The fifth-grader from Fallon Park Elementary said, "I live in that house. My mom told me the four houses on this block were historic."
Kern smiled.
The girl said, "My mom said that second door was for a barbershop."
Later, Kern marveled: "That girl is a positive sign. Someone passed along the history to her."
