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Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands.

LOCATION: HIDDEN VALLEY 6116 Monteith Dr. Greenville Memorial AME Zion Church

6116 monteith dr.

Fellowship in Hidden Valley

In a church parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, friends take stock of their changing city

IT’S A SPECIAL BUT NOT EXCLUSIVE CLUB, the so-called “parking lot committee” that spontaneously gathers each Sunday outside Greenville Memorial AME Zion Church in Charlotte’s Hidden Valley neighborhood. Its members laugh when they call themselves that. But it’s the hallmark of a real community. Today, they’ve been together as the 9 a.m. Sunday School turned into the 10 a.m. worship service. Now it’s nearly 1:30 p.m., and a dozen or so people assemble in the parking lot, picking a spot for lunch and more fellowship.

Their church building opened in 1978, but the congregation has been together far longer, and its story illustrates how Charlotte treated many African-American neighborhoods as the city grew. Members originally worshipped at a location on Statesville Avenue, about ve miles west. But state o cials decided to route a new section of Interstate 77 through the property. Church leaders hustled and found new land, secured loans, and started construction.

Then the state picked another route for I-77. The church nally paid o the loans on its 41-year-old building last year. “We ended up tearing our church down, and then they changed their minds,” says Jackie Stinson (in the middle of the photo above), a 61-year-old retired teacher who grew up in the congregation and, when the time came, brought her own children. “What can you do?”

From the late ’80s until a few years ago, Hidden Valley was notorious for gang activity and violent crime. But the neighborhood’s crime rate has dropped, and property values are rising. Even in the worst of times, the church was never a target for criminals or vandals, members say. They never worried when choir practice or an outreach project ran late and they’d emerge into a dark parking lot. They still don’t.

And on this day, under bright a ernoon sunshine, they hug goodbye to the few who aren’t moving on to lunch and make plans with those who are. —Cristina Bolling