The Roanoker - March/April 2021 - 30

In the 50 years that Whitworth has run the
Tribune she has never missed a publication, a
testament to her tenacious devotion to a news
enterprise that her father, a former Baptist
pastor, launched in 1939. The newspaper's first
issues were published in 1941.
In 2019, the Tribune celebrated its 80-year
anniversary.
Now, at 93 years old, Whitworth arrives
at the Tribune at 9 a.m. each day and leaves
no earlier than 5 p.m. She writes her own
weekly column, Turtle Talk, and she edits all
of the articles that appear in the newspaper.
Her mission: To shine a light on the Black
community both in Roanoke and nationwide.
" We don't print negative news, " Whitworth
says. " That's what everybody else does. The most
important thing to me is that we print the
positive side of blackness. "
Each Tribune issue contains national and
local news as well as articles covering athletics
at Black colleges and universities and in
professional sports, along with commentaries,
obituaries and event listings. It is printed each
week at the Salem-Times Register in Salem.
Whitworth, who was born in West Virginia
but grew up in Lynchburg and Christiansburg,
got her start in the newspaper business after
graduating high school in Christiansburg and
attending Bluefield State College for a short
time.
She moved away from the Roanoke Valley
to gain experience at other newspapers as a

30 MARCH/APRIL 2021

linotype machine operator. She says she originally wanted to learn the
machine at the Tribune, but her father, the Rev. Fleming E. Alexander was
afraid that she would hurt or break the equipment.
" I was determined to do [learn] it anyhow, " she says.
Whitworth scanned a map and chose Dayton, Ohio, because she knew
no one there and it wasn't too far from Virginia. She bought a one-way
train ticket there.
Whitworth lived in YWCAs when she first arrived in Ohio, and later
she moved to New York City. Linotype machines once were used to set
word type for printing newspapers, and as a woman, it was easy to find a
job operating them. That's because there were few, if any, female linotype
operators at that time.
" Women weren't expected to do the things that she was doing, " says
Katherin Elam, president of Junior Achievement of Southwest Virginia
and a member of the Tribune's community board. Elam first heard
Whitworth's story when the editor was selected as Junior Achievement's
2009 laureate for the Business Hall of Fame.
" If somebody told her she can't, she'll find a way to do it, " Elam adds.
Whitworth says she was never interested in becoming a newspaper
reporter, claiming that she would rather work behind the scenes, even in
mostly smoke-filled and male-dominated newsrooms in Ohio and New
York.
" I wouldn't talk or play with them [the men], " Whitworth says. " I
would just go to work. "
All along, her goal was to return to the Roanoke Tribune. Whitworth
did come back, and in 1971, she purchased the Tribune from her father
after he became ill.
It was a role that Whitworth took on willingly, but it did not come
without its challenges.
She recalls the time that the newspaper's building on Henry Street in
Roanoke's Black district was bulldozed to make way for urban renewal.
Whitworth says she received a phone call at 8 a.m. that day, telling her
that the building was coming down.

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