In the quiet halls of the Library of Virginia, stories once buried beneath bulldozers and blueprints are finding their voices again. Two upcoming film screenings will explore the human cost of displacement in Virginia’s past — from a razed Black neighborhood in Charlottesville to the mountain families uprooted to make way for the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

The events are part of the Library’s ongoing exhibition “House to Highway: Reclaiming a Community History,” which runs through Feb. 28. 

Filmmakers Lorenzo Dickerson and Jordy Yager will present their Emmy and Telly Award-winning documentary “Raised/Razed” on Friday, Nov. 7 from 2 to 4 p.m. The film examines Charlottesville’s oldest African American neighborhood, Vinegar Hill, and the lasting impact of the federal Urban Renewal program that demolished it in the 1960s. Both filmmakers will lead a discussion following the screening. Registration is required at lva-virginia.libcal.com. 

Dickerson, founder of the Maupintown Film Festival and Maupintown Media, focuses his work on stories of African American history and culture in Virginia. Yager, the digital humanities director at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, helped launch the African American Oral History Project and the Mapping Cville and Mapping Albemarle projects, which trace property records containing racial covenants. 

The second screening, “Rock Castle Home,” will take place Friday, Dec. 12 from 2 to 4 p.m. Director and executive producer Charles D. Thompson Jr., professor of the practice of cultural anthropology and documentary studies at Duke University, will lead a discussion after the film. 

“Rock Castle Home” tells the story of the Rock Castle Gorge families displaced in the mid- 1930s as part of the National Park Service’s plan for the Blue Ridge Parkway. The film follows their descendants’ ongoing efforts to preserve their family histories through photographs and storytelling. Registration is required at lva-virginia.libcal.com. 

More information about the “House to Highway” exhibition and related programs is available at lva.virginia.gov. Exhibition programming is supported by Virginia Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.