In a changing Southside, a community rallies with a new event to support its youth as the school year begins.
Above: Barber Don McMillan cuts a student’s hair as part of the Southside community’s Back to School Bash. Many local barbers and beauticians volunteered for the event. Photo by Robert Simmons.
In the Dr. Wesley Grant Center, Stephanie Maewether sat among a room full of school supplies. All this, she told the Blade, was assembled in a month. So was the Back to School event going on in the building and throughout the whole Southside neighborhood on Aug. 18.
“I looked around and some kids didn’t even have proper socks,” she says. “I reached out to my friends and my community and it started there.”
Three hours after she put out the call for help on Facebook, Maewether says, a friend arrived with socks, the start of the roomful of supplies. They raised money to help children get haircuits, food and supplies.
“We were raised by a village, in Erskine, now we are the village,” she says. “We want to show that if they strive for greatness, we’ll be there to support them.”
A bevy of local organizations, including the the Residents’ Council of Asheville’s housing authority, A-B Tech, Green Opportunities, Asheville Greenworks, the city’s Parks and Rec department and more also joined in with the residents’ efforts. During the morning, yellow-vested volunteers went through the area, cleaning it up. Four local barber shops volunteered their services to provide free haircuts. Students received school supplies and the neighborhood hosted a cook-out.
“This is probably the largest event focusing on young people that we’ve had in my time at the housing authority,” housing authority CEO Gene Bell told the crowd.
Southside, a predominantly African-American community with a long and sometimes tragic history, faces concerns about gentrification amid rising housing prices, along with a controversial overhaul of the management and financing of the public housing that makes up part of the neighborhood. A new education center is also opening up in the area, a joint effort between Green Opportunities and the housing authority. At the State of Black Asheville and other events, attendees often discussed the need for a more organized community response to issues throughout the city, including in Southside.
Speaking to about 100 people, many of them children, Southside Advisory Board chair Priscilla Ndiaye linked the event to the area’s history and identity, and said there are plans to combine it with a pushed for increased volunteering in schools from area residents.
“We wanted to show you that you’re part of the community, that we care,” she said. “Look around the room, who said we couldn’t do this? We can do anything we put our minds to.”
“I’m tired of people saying ‘we’ve lost a child in the community,’ we need to come together. This community down here was a thriving community. We owned businesses, we owned homes, we came together to take care of families. We stuck together, and that’s what we want to do from this point forward.”
Bubbles Griffin of Just Folks, a non-profit created to preserve the city’s African-American heritage, said that after the word went out over Facebook (“sometimes it’s a good thing”) multiple organizations and community members banded together, raised money and made the event a reality.
Maeweather said that the event will become a regular, annual occasion.
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