This story is
republished
courtesy of
The Independent.
It originally appeared
on page 15 of its
November 25, 1998 issue.
Click document
to enlarge view
of the Indy award.
Onward Citizen-Soldiers:
Old West Durham
Neighborhood Association
Long before diversity became a popular term, Old West Durham had it.
In the late 1800s, when the community was called Pinhook, railroad travelers
gathered on Hillsborough Road to sell tobacco and dabble in vices at
local brothels. A local newspaper described a typical scene one day
in 1871: A man and woman had run a foot race for a quart of liquor--stark
naked. When Erwin Cotton Mills started up at the turn of the century,
folks' behavior toned down as workers planted roots, building homes
and raising families. The "mill village of West Durham" became a residential
area where pastors, grocers and mill workers - black and white - lived
next door to one another.
When Kelly Jarrett moved to Old West Durham from Connecticut in 1992,
the neighborhood still appeared to have its traditional flavor. Auto
mechanics and retired cotton mill workers lived alongside bankers and
teachers in small-frame houses with tidy flower beds. At nearby Duke
University, where Jarrett had accepted a part-time teaching post, giant
oak trees and concrete monuments bespoke the past, while new-age shops
and trendy restaurants flourished on Ninth Street.
That eclectic mix attracted Jarrett to the area. But a couple of years
after she settled in, the glow began to wear off. That's when Betty
Greene, a former co-worker of Jarrett's from Connecticut who's African-American,
moved into Jarrett's Oakland Avenue duplex.
"I used to sit out front and have conversations with neighbors," says
Jarrett, "but after Betty moved down, things slowly changed. We'd come
home from the grocery store and there'd be people on the porch talking.
Then we'd get out of the car, and suddenly conversations would stop."
Only later did Jarrett and Greene discover the source of the shushed
talk: Trouble was brewing on the block.
Jarrett and
Greene already knew about the three men living on their street who occasionally
shot off rifles at night, whooping it up just for fun. "Everybody knew
about their mentality," says Jarrett. "One night after I'd heard shots,
I asked a neighbor about it and they said, 'Oh, that's just Howard.'"
What the pair didn't know was that the men's antics would soon increase,
and become directed at them.
OWDNA is one of five Citizen Award winners
honored by The Independent this year.
By
Afefe L. Tyehimba
"The most important thing was how they stood
up to hate," says Wells Eddleman, former chair of Durham's Human Relations
Commission.
"I started to hear the 'N' word a lot coming from across the street,"
says Greene. "Not enough to be confrontational, but enough to make sure
you'd hear. Then one day this guy rode by on a lawn mower and said the
word while talking to somebody near my driveway. On another occasion
I overheard him say, 'The only good nigger is a dead nigger.'"
The "him" Greene refers to is Howard Snyder, one of the men who took
issue not just with Greene's race, but also with the fact that she and
Jarrett were housemates and, presumably, gay. "They absolutely made
that assumption," Jarrett says, "but that was their homophobia. We never
discussed our private lives, yet they felt they had the right to enforce
that assumption." During the summer of '95, gunshots in the middle of
the night became commonplace. The streetlight in front of Jarrett and
Greene's home was shot out three times. "We were afraid to turn the
lights on at night," Jarrett recalls, "because we could be seen." The
pair called the police, but were told that unless the rowdy bunch trespassed
or took direct action against them, they had little recourse.
That changed after what Jarrett calls "the Sweet Jesus, White Power
night," when the trio went on a rampage, chanting "bitches, whores and
niggers out of West Durham." They marched up and down the block, shooting
rifles and shouting about "sweet Jesus" from loudspeakers. "When the
police arrived, they said they were having a dispute with 'those atheists,'"
recalls Greene. But they'd finally done enough for formal charges to
be filed. "It was clear this was race and gender bias," says Durham
District Attorney Frank Hardin. "The situation was extremely dangerous
and racially charged. I had lived here all my life and thought this
community had developed beyond that kind of activity, but with respect
to those three individuals, it harkened back to this country's dark
past."
Hardin prosecuted the three men later that summer, winning convictions
on the charge of ethnic intimidation. None of the three served time,
but each was Ūned and put on probation.
More importantly, "Sweet Jesus, White Power night" had woken up the
neighborhood. The court had ordered the men to stay away from Jarrett
and Greene. Supportive neighbors from surrounding streets and nearby
areas like Watts-Hillandale helped enforce that order, implementing
street patrols and curbside escorts. "One guy," says Greene, "parked
his car outside our house and jogged home to make it look like someone
was here with us." Galvanized by this effort, a group of more than 50
citizens soon formed the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association. "The
first year we ran on adrenaline," says John Schelp, president of the
association. There was plenty of that to go around: While the convicted
men had stopped shooting guns and marching, they still tried to intimidate
people who came to Jarrett and Greene's aid. Visitors to their home
were frequently trailed when they left. And after he wrote a letter
to the Durham Herald-Sun decrying the men's behavior, Schelp "got lots
of hang-up calls and heard screeching tires go past my house."
Things are quieter now. The three men have left the area; one is deceased.
But the neighborhood association hasn't lost steam. "It was important
to take all that energy and use it for something good," says Jarrett.
Over the past three years, the association has organized food drives
and gotten the city to install more streetlights in the neighborhood.
In October, a ceremony was held to unveil a new sign at the intersection
of Hillsborough Road and Ninth Street: "Old West Durham: Diversity,
Harmony, Community." Those three words have symbolically replaced the
three men who once wreaked such havoc for Jarrett, Greene and their
neighbors.
"The most important thing was how they stood up to hate," says Wells
Eddleman, former chair of Durham's Human Relations Commission. On one
occasion, Eddleman sat in Jarrett and Greene's home "while the guns
were clicking and all that kind of stuff." Today, he says he's amazed
at the neighborhood's "courage and mutual support. Their slogan says
it all. It took a lot of work, particularly to bring the harmony." Chalk
it up as victory, relief, or both, but residents are reveling in a sense
of renewed pride. "In Old West Durham," says Schelp, "we've got a special
group of people who go sit on neighbors' porches and have a cup of coffee.
That's what these new neo-traditional villages are trying to attain,
but we've already got it."
They've also got two new homeowners: Earlier this year, Kelly Jarrett
and Betty Greene purchased the Oakland Avenue duplex, putting down roots
in just the kind of neighborhood where they wanted to live all along.