A deadly double-shooting involving juveniles is being investigated in Jackson County. Absentee voting is now underway in NC. Home prices in South Asheville rising the fastest
Priscilla Ndiaye Robinson looked across the empty fields where her Southside neighborhood once thrived. “It’s all gone,” she said. “One thousand two hundred businesses and homes were lost.”
The neighborhood, where approximately half of Asheville’s Black population lived, suffered major upheaval under Asheville’s urban renewal program in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the largest urban renewal projects in the Southeastern United States.
Ndiaye Robinson’s memories of childhood delights a neighbor’s cupcakes, playing with chickens, charging up the grassy hills are tainted by sadness and umbrage at what happened. “It broke up a loving community. It tore up families,” she recalled.