TWO CITIES
J’Tanya Adams in front of an Underground Railroad mural in a pop-up park she helped create, 2021. Photo by Grant Baldwin. Courtesy of Queen City Nerve.
the shift displaced families who could no longer afford to live in their old neighborhoods, whether along Beatties Ford Road or in communities such as Cherry, Belmont and Villa Heights. By 2016, the previously all-Black neighborhood of Cherry had become predominantly white. Biddleville, which had been founded as a Black community, and which had been 96 percent Black in 2010, had become 25 percent white.13 African Americans working to revitalize historically Black neighborhoods thus had to fight to preserve the cultural and neighborly connections that made up the rich Black heritage of those areas. Community organizer J’Tanya Adams was one of many Charlotteans who took up that challenge. She grew up in the Steele Creek community, and when she was young “the land of milk and honey for Black people was Beatties Ford Road . . . Anything you could want or desire to be was on Beatties Ford Road.” In 2010, as she watched the racial makeup of westside communities change, she decided to invest in “the area that I believed in.” She purchased a home in Seversville and organized the Historic West End Partners, which focused on building up economic and cultural assets and nurturing small businesses.14 As the area grew, investment followed. The west side gained new 127
