North Carolina city turns to reparations to heal ‘community breakdown’
ASHEVILLE, NC (CNN) — The memories of the wholesale emptying of the predominantly Black middle-class, neighborhood centered around South French Broad Avenue are still seared in Priscilla Ndiaye Robinson’s mind decades later.
As a young teen in the 1970s, she watched her neighbors drag furniture from their homes, placing it on the sidewalk where the belongings would be collected and unbeknownst to them at the time, re-sold. They later learned that the items were sold in antique shops. They were being re-located out of their homes and into new, smaller public housing. It was supposed to be a temporary move. Residents were told they would be able to purchase lots of land to rebuild cheaply, but many were never able to.
Priscilla Ndiaye Robinson, remembers as a young-teen in the 1970s, watching neighbors forced to leave their homes in the name of urban renewal.
Today, Robinson, 59, has a name for what she saw and experienced: urban renewal, policies that many Black Americans refer to by the pejorative, “urban removal.” The loss of community, home ownership and Black-owned businesses still brings her to tears.
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