Jackie Kiger on Pisgah Legal’s response to Helene
Pisgah Legal Services Executive Director Jackie Kiger discusses supporting families, navigating recovery, and ensuring access to justice after Hurricane Helene.
HENDERSONVILLE – Gayla Black hadn’t known until recently that the house she and her husband built in 1982 in a subdivision called Green Meadows stands on ground that was once the historically Black Hendersonville neighborhood of Brooklyn, razed during midcentury urban renewal.
“I had no idea,” she said. “They came in and tore everything down.”
Most city residents might not have known either.
But a project sponsored by the Hendersonville Historic Preservation Commission is working to change that, mapping the often-overlooked history of a handful of city neighborhoods and conducting oral histories with community elders to make sure that what they lived isn’t forgotten.
The Neighborhood History Project aims to put names, faces and memories to streets, buildings, even vacant lots.
By the time it’s done, Hendersonville could have three new historic districts along with an important archive of recollections.
The historically Black “lost communities” of Black Bottom (downtown south of Allen Street), Brooklyn (now Green Meadows), Grey Hosiery Mill (around 4th and 5th Avenues east of King Street), and Plum Nelly (around Hendersonville High School), were destroyed decades ago, preservation consultant Sybil Argintar said in a progress presentation at a local church Sept. 25.
In the Grey Hosiery Mill area, only one house existing in 1949 still stands today, she said.
But the neighborhoods of Harris Street, Peacock Town and West End survive and could be protected for the future.
Betty Gash, 80, has lived in Hendersonville all her life. She grew up under Jim Crow and remembers graduating from the segregated Ninth Avenue School, now Hendersonville Middle School, at the edge of one proposed historic district.
She’s done two oral histories with the Neighborhood History Project.
“They don’t teach (this) history anymore in schools,” Gash told the Times-News.
“Everybody needs to know about it, there’s a lot that has not been told,” she said.
Blue Ridge Community College oral historian Rachel Quinn has been conducting interviews with individuals and holding small group sessions.
Quinn said she could be interviewing into November and is still looking for more people interested in talking.
“I wouldn’t even say we’re halfway through this project, there’s a lot more work to be done,” city of Hendersonville Planner Sam Hayes told attendees before asking for feedback.
Argintar’s report, compiled from research on historical maps, city directories and residents’ recollections, showed proposed boundaries for historic districts that could be added to the National Register of Historic Places, which attendees discussed and dissected.
Large printouts of Sanborn fire insurance maps from 1949 covered folding tables and organizers invited people to identify houses and buildings that they recognized.
Names of residents and other annotations were marked in red pen.
Being on the National Register doesn’t restrict or protect properties, except in certain specific circumstances like federally funded road-widening, Argintar said.
“It’s mostly a documentation process.”
But when an area is designated a local historic district, that has some teeth, with power to protect buildings from demolition or exterior changes and set guidelines for new construction, she said.
The project could also include history trail and historic markers on sidewalks around town.
Gash’s daughter-in-law Katy Gash said her dream is to see a museum presenting Henderson County’s Black history. That would include the ugly history cemeteries and laundromats segregated down the middle.
Betty Gash recalled her sister working at the now soon-to-close Sherman’s Sports, a “bright spot” at a time when most white businesses refused to hire Black people in customer-service roles, she said.
“When we’re talking about those days, it’s not just to highlight all the wrongs based on color,” Katy Gash said. It’s also to remember the good, the solidarity and strength that it took for Henderson County’s Black community “to make it through with such dignity.”
Find more information on the Neighborhood History Project and contact its organizers here, at the City of Hendersonville’s website: https://www.hendersonvillehpc.org/nhp
George Fabe Russell is the Henderson County Reporter for the Hendersonville Times-News. Tips, questions, comments? Email him at GFRussell@gannett.com.
