Dear Ms. Lunelle,
The City of Asheville, North Carolina had a so-called “Eagle Market Street Redevelopment Committee” whose Charge was to formalize a Plan to redevelop the area known as ‘the Block” to its heyday of Black Business. However, they would drop the Charge because of sheer fear for their personal safety of entering the area to meet and plan.
As President of the Asheville Chapter of the NAACP, with a broom and the help of the Police Chief, Will Anarino, we would clean up the area that had succumbed to drug dealing and use, prostitution, rape, truancy, open gambling, weapons of mass destruction, murders, constant street fighting, piles of trash, and rats the size of cats…everywhere.
I asked for and got a seat for the NAACP on the Committee. Shortly thereafter, an illegal election was run on my Presidency. The Eagle Market Street Redevelopment Plan would disappear. Black property owners began to sell their properties and the NAACP office would return to an answering machine under the auspices of my former 1st Vice President, who ironically worked for the Affordable Housing Coalition that, along with the City of Asheville, was facing a planned Civil lawsuit by the NAACP under my administration.
Fast forward to the present day. Mayor Ester Manheimer and her Council received a Grant from the Mellon Foundation for funds to change the complexion of the Historic District of Downtown Pack Square that leads to the supposed Gateway to the Block.
This Foundation has a reputation of cultural genocide in Southern Cities for the removal of all things relating to the Constitutionally established Confederate States of America. Mayor Ester Manheimer led her Council first in illegally removing the Cenotaph of the Honorable General Robert E. Lee that stood some 10' from the Crown Jewel of the City; "the Zebulon Baird Vance Cenotaph" with the full knowledge that it was an illegal act North Carolina Monument Protection Law. And shortly thereafter, she would lead her Council to the removal of the Vance Cenotaph utilizing the justification that the “Black community wanted it”…because Vance was not only a Colonel in the Confederate Army, but also owned 6 slaves. Pure Poppycock!
Born and raised in this City in the heart of Jim Crowe, the land around the Vance Cenotaph was the ONLY integrated parcel in the entire City. As a former 1st Vice President and President of the Asheville, Buncombe County Chapter of the NAACP, I had never received a complaint about the Vance Cenotaph other than it was falling apart.
The 26th North Carolina would take the initiative to raise and secure several hundred thousand dollars to effectuate the repair, only to have Ester and her now disgraced Council without any Citizen request, to tear it down. The 26th N.C. would once again move to protect the Cenotaph with a lawsuit. Only to get all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court and be told that they had no “Standing”.
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