and maybe you wouldn't have bee ready to write this book like joanne poindexter. >> don neighborhood n roanoke and a little micro- village that only the older people still refer to as jordans alley and joann was able to -- she doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore but she was able to put me in touch with 80, 90, 100-year-old people who could help me bring m that neighborhood a live so one of the questions of the story is what happened, how did she get them back and also were theiriv lives better in the circus than they would have been at home which begs the question how was jim crow and was it better than life on the road so i was able to drive around with these older people. it reminds me of like when your kids are teenagers and don't want to talk to you except for when you're in the car. noit not only what they were seeing that they were more comfortable and that was a technique i used, not a technique that something ii did didn't want. i would drive different people around the same places but then the next time i could say so and so said at thi of this and a sty would come out.

you'd have people like joanne poindexter and-- >> yes, joanne was the newspaper's first black reporter, so, the neighborhood in roanoke, the truevine west end and the microvillage in the west end only the old people refer to an as jordan's alley or jordan's alley and joanne was able to -- who still, she doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore, but goes to church there and she was able to put me in touch with 80, 90, 100-year-old people who could help me bring that neighborhood alive. >> one of the questions of the story is like what happened, how did she get them back and also, were their lives better in the circus than at home and begs, how was life in jim crowe in roanoke, virginia. what was that like? was it better than life on the road? so i was able to drive around with these older people and, i didn't always drive around, but i always got my best stuff when i drove around. it kind of reminds me when your kids are teenagers and they don't want to talk to you except when you're in the car because you're looking at something else. people, not only what they would seeing would jog t

>> well, one of the-- one of my story beacons was joanne poindexter.she's now retired in her 60's and she called up basically the older ladies in her church that had grown up in the neighborhood and asked if i would interview them. she helped me in my career. when i wrote that pregnant and proud story that got me in so much hot water, half that i had a hard time getting african-american people to trust me in the city. i didn't mean to make those girls the subject of ridicule, i honestly didn't, but that's what happened and she would actually go out to interviews-- like there was a church that was starting and it had been a crack house and i was trying to get the neighbors to open up to me about it because i wanted to do a story on-- that's a pretty cool story, the crack house turning into a church. and joanne went around the neighborhood and vouched for me. and she did the same thing-- much years later with this, too. and again, they had read my stories and seen the work i had done since then. where i wasn't just doing like drive by anecdote reporting,