Asheville's Southside urban renewal research to be subject of local documentary

ASHEVILLE - Over the past two months, current and former Southside residents have been invited to Grind AVL on Depot Street to collect their thoughts on what many have called "the twilight" of Asheville's historically Black Southside community.

The events have been coordinated by Priscilla Ndiaye Robinson in partnership with Black Wall Street as part of her long-term research project on the impact of urban renewal. And now, Asheville filmmaker Todd Gragg plans to turn Robinson's research into a documentary.

"I remember the community being a thriving community," Robinson said of pre-urban renewal Southside. "I remember no one was homeless. No one was hungry. You could hear the laughter in the street."

The events come after the recent reveal of a mural in Grind AVL that depicts the lives of Southside residents as told through their letters, maps and pictures of the pre-urban renewal community.

Despite people smiling in the photos, the mural is meant to depict the moment the neighborhood changed, Robinson said.

"It gives you twilight. That's what you see here," she said of the mural.

Urban renewal refers to the federally funded programs from the '60s through the '80s in which land was transferred to private interests or handed over to public housing, devastating Black neighborhoods and businesses across the country.

There were six urban renewal projects in Asheville between 1965 and 1988, including the East Riverside Urban Renewal Project in Southside. The East Riverside project acquired over 930 parcels, according to the June 2022 Measuring the Impact of Urban Renewal executive summary produced by University of Maryland Professor Robert Marciano and a team of eight researchers. Robinson's childhood home was among the acquired parcels.

Documentary to cover Southside, beyond.

After the positive reception of his 2023 documentary, "Black in Asheville," local filmmaker Gragg began looking for his next project. After speaking with Robinson, he decided to cover urban renewal and Robinson's Southside research.

"When you start studying this stuff, you see how much history is involved," Gragg said of Robinson's research. "There's so many individual stories to tell."

The goal of the documentary is to hopefully allow more people to understand history, but to also help "the way we process" the events of the past, Gragg said. The project is in the early stages, but the goal is to have it ready by next February in time for Black History Month.

Before starting her research, Robinson said she actually "hated history" and hadn't thought much of it until Harry Harrison, the former Young Men's Institute Cultural Center Executive Director, asked her to consider a few questions.

As she remembers it, Harrison asked "'What is the pulse of your city? Why are the Black people so angry here? What happened?'"

"Because he asked me that question, I decided I was gonna go find out," she said.

Since 2008, years of research have brought further attention to her work and more researchers onboard to catalogue the appraisals and subsequent outcomes of the urban renewal project.

Her research and advocacy for the neighborhood has even brought a renewed effort to designate Walton Street Pool as a local historic landmark in 2022.

Community invited to participate

J. Hackett, the owner of Grind AVL and founder of Black Wall Street AVL, said her "work kept coming up as a reference point, specifically for this neighborhood." Grind AVL, at 346 Depot St. in Southside, sits less than 300 feet from a property taken during urban renewal.

"One afternoon the dots came together. While telling her about my plans, she shared some of her plans and it was a perfect match. Mr. Gilliam had copies of title deeds. Todd Gragg has expertise in production. Priscilla had the research, and I had the location," Hackett said of installing the mural.

Those at Grind also hope the mural can serve to educate people passing through the area.

"We have a lot of tourists that pass through here and I love when I see them walk out and they look at the wall and they ask questions," Grind AVL General Manager Mark Bollt said during the June 9 Southside Urban Renewal Impact event.

Just 'a pinch' of the history

Early work on the documentary has included contacting family members of former appraisers who set values for many of the Southside homes, Gragg said. At the same time, letters written by Southside residents during urban renewal serve as primary source documents that underscore the upheaval caused by the East Riverside project.

"We can't understand the future until we understand the past," Robinson said. To that end, she hopes to one day write a book based on her research.

"It hits my mind. It hits my heart. It hits my spirit," Robinson said as she gazed upon the mural.

"What you see here — that's just a pinch of the history. There's just so much I wouldn't even have room enough to put it all."

You can learn more about Robinson's research at https://urbanrenewalimpact.org. The next event at Grind AVL is planned for July 14 from 2-5 p.m.

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Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at [email protected]. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Local documentary to focus on Asheville urban renewal research