There Goes the Neighborhood | Reclaiming the Southside from 'Urban Removal'

Before there was a South Slope or River Arts District, those neighborhoods were wrapped into a swath of Asheville called Southside. Southside still exists, but its formal boundaries are tighter, separated from more prosperous neighborhoods.

People fighting for Southside’s identity and relevance are asking city leaders for something some might find audacious—to roll the French Broad Association, South Slope and River Arts District back into the branding of the Southside.

Shuvonda Harper and Sekou Coleman of the Southside United Neighborhood Association detail the damage done by what Harper calls “urban removal.” We’ll learn some of Southside’s history and their efforts to have a voice in shaping the city’s master plan.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: You mentioned the urban removal. Talk about your own vantage point in this. How old were you when this was happening? 

Shuvonda Harper: When my family moved into the Livingston Heights area, I was five. So I remember, a little before that fourish five. 

Matt Peiken: It's hard to have firm memories from that far back.

Shuvonda Harper: When you talk about stuff a lot, it stays in your memory. And my mom worked at Livingston Daycare, which was located behind, at the time, W. C. Reed, which is now the Eddington Center. And the Livingston Street Daycare is now Lonnie D. Burton Head Start. And so my roots is there because my mom worked there 30 years with Buncombe County Child Development.

And so I remember as a kid going To that daycare, we would often do walking type field trips, and it was a lot of heavy equipment, the bulldozers and things, that were staged in the in the field where now the Grant Center is And looking at pictures growing up and you see the development of what was Livingston Apartments coming up.

Matt Peiken: What was happening with that removal in terms of fragmenting neighborhood and community and sense of place? 

Shuvonda Harper: It moved a lot of people out of the area to build what is currently there now, a lot of the public housing community. And so a lot of those folks were just moved around, displaced, and To get back into the community, it's like you either go into public housing or, at the time, they had that Dollar Lot program, and so a few people were able to build homes in the area. It's quite, a few of those homes, standing and some of those folks that originally built are still living in those homes, but slowly starting to see some of that changeover and one of those houses that was built I think in 81 is Was just sold off the market for maybe 30 days now It's back on the market to be sold again at right at five hundred thousand dollars.

Matt Peiken: What are you striving to do within the Southside Neighborhood Association to reclaim the sense of place that was lost both during urban removal and in the aftermath.

What was lost that you believe is at the core of your mission with the Southside Neighborhood Association? 

Shuvonda Harper: The land. Land. It's like we need to reclaim our boundaries. Historically, some of the communities that have morphed out of the Southside neighborhood are the South French Broad Association, the South Slope Association, and the River Arts District.

And so historically those communities were Southside and Because of the Southside not having a neighborhood association that was registered with the city, it gave other communities a chance to just take over some of the area and that's what happened. 

Matt Peiken: When you say take over some of the neighborhood, are you talking about taking city attention and resources and business opportunity? What happened when these other associations formed that used to be part of Southside, that Southside was then left out of?

Shuvonda Harper: You can see it. River Arts District, for instance when you go down Depot Street and make that little turn, it's a whole different world. You start to see the tulips in the spring, whereas on the south side of things, kudzu growing wild. So you know that you're entering a whole other neighborhood when you turn that corner.

Matt Peiken: It's so interesting you point that out because I'm aware of it. When you turn that corner, you're very firmly aware that you're exiting or entering one place to another. You're saying from your experience before that became the river arts district, there was more of a cohesive feel to that entire area?

Shuvonda Harper: Yes, although it wasn't a lot of business and a lot of what's happening now down there, but there were Black folk that owned property in that area, and it might not look like what it looks like now down there, but it was somebody's business.

Matt Peiken: I find that really fascinating that not only were these other neighborhoods bisected and dissected away from the Southside identity, but it sounds like they were encouraged Just by the development of neighborhood names and associations, they were encouraged to develop more contemporary identities where Southside, and correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but Southside was left to linger without the city bringing the remaining Southside up along with the RAD and other existing or newer neighborhoods.

Shuvonda Harper: Yes. And I think that's why now we're working so hard to a lot of talk with the city council about a plan that has been up a dozen times with the South Slope. But it's let Southside get our plan together. We want to reclaim our boundaries. What does that look like that we reclaim our River Arts District boundaries, South Slope and South French Broad, to become the South side with these co neighborhoods. We're stronger together than we are apart. And so if we could. Get them on board. Let us get our plan down and see how we can work together. 

Matt Peiken: On the surface, it sounds like a big ask because River arts district has its business associations. The south slope has its own and, on one hand, you could think Every smaller neighborhood that has or develops its own identity might be a good thing because the needs of that geographic area and the businesses and residents there might be different than in Southside, might be different than RAD and elsewhere.

You're asking for this reclamation of land, of boundaries. How can that come into effect in a way when I'm sure the RAD at this point would be self protective, South Slope would be self protective. What are you looking to do that would bring them in to a larger South Side identity without Disrupting, or maybe disruption is part of the plan, you both tell me, without disrupting what the RAD and the South Slope in particular have developed since being split away.

Sekou Coleman: I believe disruption is very much part of the intention and part of the plan, and at the same time, a rising tide lifts all boats, right? So when you look at what a community, what a neighborhood, a thriving neighborhood really should be, it should be an amalgamation of all of those things. You should have businesses, you should have residences, you should have schools and churches and all sorts of spaces where everyone comes together and thrives collectively.

Unfortunately, as a result of urban removal, the community that existed within the South Side. Neighborhood prior to that period was displaced and the city wasn't even really thinking about southside, or as they called it at that time, East Riverside, they weren't even thinking about that until the funds became available to remove the blight and make it a part of a better looking space for downtown and the city of Asheville and attract tourism and all those.

Even at that time in the 50s and 60s, that was a driving economic force for the city. And so one of the things that happened as residents were displaced, not only did you lose that economic base, right? Because Black people own businesses. Those businesses didn't just support the business owner.

It provided employment for people that worked in a neighborhood. Some of those businesses were residential based businesses, whether they were childcare facilities or beauty facilities or whether they were just like apartments. And so it had this ripple effect that rippled out to the entire community.

And when that was disrupted and displaced, the opportunity for legacy residents in the neighborhood to be actively involved in the economy and building up and having a say in what it looks like, that was taken away. 

Matt Peiken: Was this a deliberate attempt from your vantages? Was this a deliberate attempt at the time to sequester and bound the Black community within itself and not have both its successes and thriving areas and its challenges affect white Asheville? Do you think there was a deliberate element of that? 

Sekou Coleman: I think that there was some deliberation in parts of it. I think it was also just Deliberate by ignorance and by lack of concern. When you go through the minutes of City Council during the '50s, particularly the meetings where there was discussion about the urban renewal process and what it meant and how it was going to be rolled out, a lot of the language that city council members and Asheville elected officials used to describe the neighborhood spoke very much about the things that they didn't like. It spoke about how there were high incidences of crime, how at that time it was known for there were higher incidents of venereal disease. I was like, why are you even talking about that? That's crazy. Yeah. But that was, that's in the minutes. It's literally in the minutes.

You read that. And and talking about how, the homes and the residences there are blighted because they don't look the way that the homes in North Asheville might have looked or what have you. And yet at the same time, the people who live there, they were first of all, let's take into account that all of this legislation happened at a time when Black Asheville was disenfranchised.

So it was happening about us, without us, and we didn't have the opportunity to participate in the voting process and on the referendums and things of that nature, So this was just happening all around the community. And at the same time, The people that were living in the community might have been doing things differently, But it was still valuable. It was still valuable to them.

And so because it wasn't respected, because it wasn't appreciated, because it wasn't held in the same esteem as what was going on by white residents, then it was deemed as less worthy, less significant, and therefore easier to change and wipe out and dig up. 

Matt Peiken: And was it also easier for the city then in its funding, in its budgeting, to deprioritize Specific elements within what now is known as Southside? Whereas If they would have done that before, there would have been white uproar because there was much more integration, neighborhood integration happening.

Sekou Coleman: Yeah. I think if you look at just like the legislation itself of the Urban Renewal Program and what it made possible, it's very likely that more progressive municipalities could have said, okay, we are entitled to this investment from the federal government. We want to see these improvements in these neighborhoods.

Why don't we work with the residents of the neighborhood and figure out how we can invest in them to honor what it is that they want? I'm sure that there are many Black business owners, many Black homeowners who would have wanted to have the investment from the government into their property to make it look better, to work better, but because of redlining, they couldn't get the loans to do that.

And so what you've got is the city saying your home looks bad. So if you can't get it up to code, then we're going to take it away from you and you can't get it up to code because you're not eligible for the loans. And so they offer you a rate for it, which is not of anything at all, and if you don't accept that, then they take it by eminent domain.

This whole process really worked to support what the vision was of the white infrastructure and the white elected officials with little or no regard for what the Black community wanted. 

Shuvonda Harper: Yeah, and so if I may add what was lost in the East Riverside area, and this will bring some of this home.

And this is a quote from the late Reverend Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. In the East Riverside area, said late Reverend Wesley Grant, we have lost more than 1, 100 homes, 6 beauty parlors, 5 barbershops, 5 filling stations, 14 grocery stores, 3 laundromats, 8 apartment houses, 7 churches, 3 shoe shops, 2 cabinet shops, 2 auto body shops, 1 hotel, 5 funeral homes, 1 hospital, and 3 doctor's offices.

Rev. Grant's church still stands on Choctaw Street to this day and its worldwide tabernacle that sits there. It's a yellow church. 

Matt Peiken: That's not to even mention the schools and community centers that were lost, right? 

Sekou Coleman: And also the in home businesses, there were lots of people that did things that might not have been a registered business with the city, but it's still provided a value to the community.

Shuvonda Harper: Provided the value. And so you look at what's now the Arthur Eddington Center, which was the Livingston Street School, and that was the school that the Southside community went to. And once the schools were integrated, it became a Parks and Rec facility, which was the W. C. Reed, and then things have moved on and what have you.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, given that menu of losses, It seems like from the very genesis of the Southside Neighborhood Association, your calls to action, just on the face of it, have to be different than almost every other neighborhood association here and the roles of it. Shuvonda, you were involved at the very start of talks of a neighborhood association for Southside.

Talk about these conversations. Who was having these talks? What were some of the recurring themes that were coming up? And what were your calls to action when you gave birth to the Neighborhood Association.

Shuvonda Harper: I think in the beginning, It was just really trying to get folks on board.

I mean it we have a lot of elders in community that have you know, like I said, it's been a couple few Southside groups over the years. 

Matt Peiken: When you say a few Southside groups, there have been previous attempts to do what

Shuvonda Harper: I don't think so much as like a Neighborhood Association per se Because none of the paperwork had been done. You had the Southside Advisory Group that was real instrumental in the redevelopment of the W. C. Reed Center, which is now the Arthur Eddington Center. And they hold the Housing Authority accountable to make sure that space remains a community space.

And so it was a partnership and a whole lot of things that happened with that. And so with that team of folk and that body of folk, a few of them are a part of the Southside United Neighborhood Association. You had another group that would always do the Southside Reunion in the community.

And it was just a group of residents who were born and raised in Southside and just Wanted to keep community events and just keep that reunion and sense of community together. And so you had that body of folk and few of those folks are part of the Southside United. But I think with this group here, it started from a seed planted in the garden.

Matt Peiken: What was the nature of that seed? What did you and your neighbors want to see happen with Southside United that maybe wasn't quite happening with the reunion and other community togetherness efforts? 

Shuvonda Harper: Just being recognized because when we look at the comprehensive plan and just the mapping of what 2043 looks like, Southside isn't even listed on that.

Matt Peiken: That's crazy. The city obviously has its comprehensive plan. Each neighborhood has its own comprehensive plan. Is Southside not being brought into that process? 

Shuvonda Harper: So that's something that we're working on now is creating that plan on a page. Now that we are recognized with the city, a year in, year and some months, really working on our plan and what the Southside want and need.

Matt Peiken: How do you see Southside's wants and needs either falling parallel with where the city is headed or using the word disruption? How do you see Southside's needs and wants running counter to what is the momentum happening in the city? Where's the harmony and where is the conflict? 

Sekou Coleman: I think it's around inclusion and representation. That's the important piece because even before We start talking about what the early conversations with the Neighborhood Association were like, as Shuvonda mentioned, there were residents in the community who were just trying to do something, anything, in response to the root shock and devastation of urban renewal, right?

And so that's how these things started, but they were really focused around specific sorts of initiatives bringing people together for the reunion, making sure that this space that used to be a community resource remained a community resource, even though the ownership and operation and the management of it changed hands from the city to the housing authority, making sure that this new space that came up as the grant center remains accountable and responsive to the needs of the community.

So there were people that were doing things in different spaces and one of the narratives that had been perpetuated consistently was outside groups, nonprofits receiving grants, receiving funding by using the stats of the neighborhood to say this neighborhood has all of these issues and we want your funding so we can do these things for the neighborhood. But then they don't do those things for the neighborhood.

Matt Peiken: That's a pretty alarming charge. Can you be specific about non profits that were using the conditions, what's happening in south side currently to get funding for either programs or initiatives that eventuality did not benefit Southside. Can you be specific?

Sekou Coleman: I think it can either be that they didn't benefit or they didn't have The intended benefit by engaging the residents in the best ways. I think one example is probably the Eddington center itself, because although the housing authority is not a nonprofit, the housing authority used the data and statistics of programs that were in operation during the city's operation of the facility.

Partners Unlimited, Upfront Sports Coaches Program. There were things that were in place that were serving the community, addressing issues around recreation addressing issues around academics, addressing issues around clothing. 

Matt Peiken: When was this?

Sekou Coleman: This was in the eighties. Oh, so way back. Okay. 

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so because people provided that data with the understanding that they would be able to utilize the space once housing authority took it over and had the renovations complete, that allowed for housing to get a significant chunk of federal dollars to complete that renovation.

And initially there was space for those individuals there under the auspices of this building being one for training and education, which is why its official name is the Arthur Eddington Center for Education and Career Development. And so that paved the way for entities like A-B Tech to have a place in there for Green Opportunities, which actually started across the street in one of the developments in Erskine beforehand.

But then what ended up happening as people come in and leadership comes in and just dealing with the realities of the nonprofit industrial complex, when you start trying to figure out where the dollar is going to come from and how do we pay the people to do this or whatever, it starts to get fewer and fewer residents of the community and more and more people from outside of the community. 

Matt Peiken: So you're talking about wanting to see and asking for, deliberately, putting in writing programs and initiatives by, for, and about the community. You mentioned what was happening in the 80s. Is this still a contemporary issue, where the data of Southside is being used by entities outside of Southside to raise money?

Sekou Coleman: Not as much, particularly since the FreshLo thing and we can talk a little bit about that. 

Shuvonda Harper: What is that? FreshLo was a grant through Kresge that was applied for Green Opportunities was the fiduciary agent but it was a partnership, collaborative thing where community wrote in letters of support to to get this money for planning.

And the idea was fresh food and low income communities. And being that South side, like I just mentioned, we have 14 grocery stores in that community. We don't have one grocery store. 

Matt Peiken: I will say. There are very few neighborhoods in this city that have like small grocery stores anymore, like they're all the big chains, right? But you're saying they've all gone from Southside. 

Shuvonda Harper: And so the only store that we have in the Southside community is Green's, which is a convenient store, gas station, pop in and out, and there's really no healthy options there. So FreshLo was to bring fresh food into low income communities. And so through that, the garden, which is now a farm behind the Eddington center was created from that.

And so when I say the seed was planted, that's where the advisory team for that became the Southside United Neighborhood Association. Because the folks that sat at that table were community members or people that lived in the Southside. So people that either work, serve, or live in the community were at that table.

And so from that grant and the implementation, we built a pavilion in the garden space and kind of extended over into the orchard doing work there, but to bring the food back into the community because we didn't have it. 

Matt Peiken: Is that still a fertile garden for the neighborhood? 

Shuvonda Harper: It's a flourishing farm, and it's been growing since 2015. Yeah, we have a free fridge down on the pavilion where A lot of the stuff that's harvested from that farm goes into the fridge so that the community can have access to healthy food. 

Sekou Coleman: One of the key things about that narrative and that history is pivotal in the switch in how residents of Southside worked with organizations within Southside, because as Shuvonda mentioned, the grant was received with the explicit intention of engaging and collaborating with the community.

The narrative prior to that, As I mentioned, was that organizations would receive grants and then they would not be held accountable for serving the community. And so it was Shuvonda, who at that time was working in the building and had been initially invited to the table by Green Opportunities to represent the community. Shuvonda began to see, wait a minute, we need to make sure that Green Opportunities are being held, so we need to bring more community people in. Ultimately, that's how I was brought in as a project manager to help as an outside person, as someone who's not an employee of green opportunities, to ensure that these objectives are met and ensure that there's community collaboration all the way throughout.

Ultimately, it ended up Where the grant funds, it started with a $75,000 planning grant, but ultimately that led to to implementation grants of $200,000 each. So just short of a half million dollars was invested by the Kresge Foundation into the Southside. 

Matt Peiken: And this was all through FreshLo.

Sekou Coleman: This was all through their FreshLo initiative because Southside was one of 25 neighborhoods around the country that were identified and received this funding. And it was not just the funding that was received, it was the opportunity to learn and be part of this cohort.

We had these convenings where we traveled to Louisiana and to Colorado and to Ohio and other places to actually see and learn from other grantees and experience what was actually possible. And we had folks, for example in Athens. Georgia, there was a group there that came here several times to, to meet with us and break bread with us and learn from what we were doing and to share information.

So it was a very powerful thing. And midway through the the funding process, the steering committee elected to have a different fiscal sponsor. Because they wanted to ensure that the grant funds were going to be properly stewarded by a nonprofit and not utilized for other purposes.

Matt Peiken: But the, the fiscal agent at that point was green opportunities, right? Correct. And so you wanted to have a different entity. 

Sekou Coleman: That is correct. Bountiful cities ended up being the fiscal sponsor at that point. Bountiful Cities has a history of working with community led initiatives.

They've worked with the Shiloh Neighborhood Association to help Shiloh get land. They worked with Burton Street Community and have worked with other communities, not just historically Black communities, but just other neighborhoods particularly around agriculture, urban agriculture, sustainable farming and so forth.

Matt Peiken: So we started this conversation by talking about you want a reclamation of land. You want some of the neighborhoods that were torn out of South side, at least in name and given their own identities, given their own funding and their own priorities. You want to see them back under a Southside umbrella.

Have you talked with leaders or representatives of these neighboring associations about your ideas around this? And if so, what have you heard? 

Shuvonda Harper: That's something that we're in the process of doing. We have had a visit from the South French Broad Association to attend our meeting and my co chair has been to A couple of their neighborhood meetings, so it's a process, definitely some conversations that need to be had. 

Matt Peiken: Do you think the concentration of public housing in Southside is a continuing sore spot, in a sense? And the sequestering of Southside seemed deliberate in that way, sequestering it from other neighborhoods.

You mentioned redlining, we've talked about people lost homes and businesses, and are now in public housing. From your vantages, how much does public housing Continue to be obstructions to what you want to see in the neighborhood. 

Sekou Coleman: Let's separate public housing, the institution of public housing, from Residents of public housing. Right a lot of times, they're lumped together And so people look at public housing communities and you're blaming the victim. People live in public housing communities Because they can't afford to live anyplace else and as we know especially here in Asheville It's astronomical, the cost of living, right?

And traditionally in many places it's not just here in Asheville, like I've worked in done community work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I grew up in Washington, DC. There's many places you'll go to, public housing communities are generally in spaces that are either at the top of a hill or at the bottom of a valley, out in the outskirts, out of sight, out of mind. And so the legacy of public housing in Southside is a tricky one. Because what it did is it took homeowners, property owners, and turn them into renters. 

Matt Peiken: That's exactly what I was referring to. Yeah You know that the development of these public housing facilities, Residential facilities, was part of what I'm calling the sequestering, and by removing the River Arts District from that south side neighborhood, by removing South Slope, it was all part of the same concentration, wasn't it?

Am I missing something here? 

Sekou Coleman: No, it happened in that way. Maybe I'm too naive to believe that there was a, intentional plan of let's figure out how to separate this up or whatever. I think ultimately it was just this kind of, I don't want this in my backyard.

And then as you get this sort of gentrification moving in, then people want to build something for themselves, but they want to distance it, so the River Arts District is separate from South Side because South Side is where public housing is. So we're not Southside, we're River Arts District.

South French Broad is separate because we're not part of that public housing and the prostitution and all that stuff. South Slope is separate, and no, you're part of the same community, and it's all part of what needs to be dealt with collectively. And the real troubling thing is, Because of the legacy of urban renewal, the housing authority is the owner, the holder of some of the most valuable real estate in the city of Asheville right now.

And there are programs, as we talked about With the FreshLo initiative, being able to see what is happening in other communities, there are places around the country where public housing authorities have worked with residents to transfer them from renters to owners and to figure out how do we take these places and we basically give them back to the community that lives there.

So that's an opportunity that exists. Whether that is an opportunity that the housing authority will seek to actualize is unknown. However, the Southside United Neighborhood Association was established so that residents like Shuvonda and others would have the tools to advocate for these kinds of things.

Because without it, there was nothing in place. There were no resources for residents to speak up and say, no, this is what we want and to actually be heard and to be taken into account. 

Matt Peiken: What's next for south side in terms of your actions, your priorities? What's ahead? 

Shuvonda Harper: Building that plan on the page getting the community more involved in what the South Side looked like. The community has changed a lot over the years and the demographics isn't the same as it was in the 70s, 80s, even the 90s. But the current residents that are there, and we do have some that are new to the Southside.

My co chair lived in Asheville and never really knew about the Southside until he moved over to the Southside. And learning about the house that he's in and the people that live there it has been meaningful, and a couple of others that live there that are, new to the area and where they live, just learning about the history.

But I think just building up that capacity, making sure that the community understands that Southside is united and we're here. Right now we have a strong body of folk that that show up. But want to really increase that capacity. 

Matt Peiken: Is engagement a challenge, getting people in the neighborhood engaged in these issues and appreciating the history that we've talked about here today. Has that been a challenge for you? 

Shuvonda Harper: I think in the beginning it was. But now that we just did a successful event in October. And that brought community out. And they see that, oh, that was Southside United that did that. So the more that we do in community, the community is starting to see that Southside is here.

I'm looking at our city council and the makeup of those that sit in those positions. We have two Southside residents that sit on our city council. Sandra Kilgore has showed up and has been attending our meetings.

We have had some meetings with Sandra, our leadership team, so that we can have a discussion on what does it look like for Southside and what we're wanting and we want them to Not stop Everything but you know give Southside time Not so much catch up, but get our plan down and what we need for our community.