Check out today’s story about Ujamaa Freedom Market in the Citizen Times.
Officially founded at the beginning of 2013, the business is a worker-owned cooperative mobile market designed to provide fresh local produce, healthy prepared foods and other household necessities in communities throughout Asheville on a weekly basis, focusing particularly on communities experiencing poverty and so-called “food deserts.”
Seven nights of celebration of African culture led by community members. come and be inspired for the new year! We will have activities for the youth as well!
Thank you to all of our presenters and host locations!
If you have any questions please call/text Bella Jackson (912) 433-5411 or Calvin Allen (828) 407-6733
Please pick up a copy of December’s Urban News – our local Gateway to the Multicultural Community. Free at local newspaper stands.
Saturday, December 21, 6-8pm at Tried Stone Missionary Baptist Church, 100 Carroll Avenue.
Please see Ami Worthen’s story in the Mountain Express
Do you love to sing? Do you enjoy spitting beats and flowing in your spare time? Do you wish to surround yourself around a group of positive women of color? Do you want to get paid doing what you love? If this sounds like you and you are 18 or over, attend the info session and sign up for an audition!
RiverSong is a new a capella chorus forming here in Asheville. Comprising exclusively of women of color from various backgrounds, RiverSong’s mission is to inspire women from racially oppressed and economically disadvantaged communities to affirm their voices through song and performance. Many of the songs we will perform are considered traditional power songs, spanning the cultures and histories embodied in the group. As examples of high caliber art and self-affirmation, we can uplift our communities and inspire social justice through:
Info session is Thursday December 12, 2013, 7pm-8pm in Hillcrest 17A. Auditions will be scheduled at the info session.
Childcare will be provided.
Women who are also bilingual or know American Sign Language are highly encouraged to come. Sign language interpretation will be provided.
I look forward to seeing you there!
Anastasia Yarbrough
If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to call me on my cell (901) 355-6225 or email me at anastasia.yarbrough@gmail.com.
Thanks to Mr. Thomas Joyce, of Smooth’s DO Drop In for giving me this Black Pages directory from 2005. The Black Pages of Asheville was published by DSI Black Pages, who ran a website and published a directory that covered not only Asheville/WNC, but also Orlando/Lakeland & the Tampa Bay area. In looking through the ads and the directory I didn’t see any designation for black owned businesses, but there certainly are several. It’s a great snapshot of Asheville businesses at the time, and it’s a nice piece of history to be able to share.
Does anyone have memories or photos of some of these businesses? Maybe only readers of a certain ‘vintage’ might. Thanks to Mr. Jesse Ray, Jr. for sharing this list with me, it was something his father kept.
African American clubs in Asheville, NC
The date of this list is unknown, but what an amazing piece of history! Asheville has long had a rich network of formal and informal social groups among the African American community. Only a few of these groups still exist, but there are many new groups, church families, neighborhood groups, intergenerational family ties, and now online groups to add to the networks of connection in Asheville’s African American community.
As with any other large group of people, they represent a wide range of opinions, points of view, political thoughts and life experiences that make for a diverse, multi-dimensional community.
In Asheville’s segregated past, most black-owned businesses were concentrated in small neighborhoods, where interdependence, close kin and long community relationships built a ready, steady supply of business and money circulated for a long time within the neighborhood. Desegregation and later the destruction of some parts of those neighborhoods in “urban renewal” broke the bonds between the people and their local businesses. For all the progress and increased potential desegregation brought, it came at a price in the loss of tight-knit neighborhoods that supported local livelihoods. Over the years Asheville’s African American people have been proud of their business accomplishments, and keeping a display like this (which looks like a collection cut out of a phone book or some other directory) was a way of celebrating them. The spirit of entrepreneurship is still going strong in Asheville, and can only get stronger with the vital support of the black community!