Dirt Turns in Midway – Water Lines and More

           A lot has happened in the unincorporated community of Midway, in Moore County, North Carolina.  Midway is just across the railroad tracks from the Town of Aberdeen – another popular golf community.

            Maurice Holland has seen a lot of this change and he’s been partly responsible for it.  The 63-year-old licensed practical nurse lives across the street from the home where he grew up.  Like many of the mostly African American residents there, he left for several years to work, and found his way back.

            Like Jackson Hamlet and some other mostly black communities in Moore County – Midway sits in an ETJ, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction.  It’s a special designation approved by the state of North Carolina that gives municipalities a tool to control growth and promote better planning.  The problem with this designation, folks tell me, is that communities can be held and ignored in an ETJ forever.  Holland says that’s what was happening to Midway.  But today, water and sewer lines are literally being placed in the ground, and Holland says Aberdeen is finally considering annexing them. 

For almost nine years, Holland has sat on the Aberdeen Planning Board as its ETJ representative.  He tells me, a Midway presence has made a world of difference for the community:

 “You get information on the inside.  You see the trends.  Youare there to approve or amend or vary plans or subdivisions, andyou understand what’s happening.  So when you come back to your community you can explain the consequences of doing nothing.”

            Holland admits the residents living in the nearly 30 homes making up Midway did nothing for a long time.  And then, he says, with the help of community activists and the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC Law School, they demonstrated near the 2005 US Open Golf Tournament in Pinehurst – also in southern Moore County. It brought attention to their struggles, he says.

            Besides the water and sewer lines, a community of homes will soon be built in Midway – something Holland says he thought he’d never see.  When about 10 acres went up for auction by the State Department of Transportation, Holland, the Center for Civil Rights and others started looking for a buyer.  Turns out, Habitat for Humanity stepped up.  Good news for Holland and the other residents.  He says wealthy subdivisions were springing up around them and it was only a matter of time before they could have been priced out.

The Glue Keeping Excluded Communities Together

            In recent months, there have been successes to report about in the fight for municipal services in Moore County, North Carolina.  Not too long ago, it was announced that the Town of Southern Pines was awarded a $750,000 Community Development Block Grant to help pay for Waynor Road residents to have municipal water and sewer.  Funds are also beginning to trickle in for the mostly African-American community of Jackson Hamlet, near Pinehurst.

            One unifying force that has kept spirits high and communities’ issues in the news is Voices for Justice – the “glue.”  Hilton Dunlap and Bobby Person have worked more than 20 years speaking out and publicizing issues of racial discrimination in Moore County.  Person even had to fight the Ku Klux Klan for burning a cross in his yard and threatening his life.  With the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center, he won that fight.  So it was of no surprise when the two men helped to drum up support and get the word out about the five African American communities in Moore County needing help – and a “voice.”

            It seems Dunlap and Person never sleep!  Last fall, they were getting the word out about a Community Workshop of Land Loss Prevention in Carthage, North Carolina (also in Moore County).  “Protect Your Family Land,” is what it was called.  And the gathering was specifically set-up to teach African Americans about the causes of “black land loss.”

            In their continued fight to preserve land owned by African Americans, especially in Moore County, Voices for Justice signed on to a letter that was sent to North Carolina Legislators.  Joined by residents of Jackson Hamlet, Waynor Road and Midway – making up the Southern Moore Alliance of Excluded Communities (SMAEC) – they are challenging the state’s annexation laws:

             “SMAEC recommends that the General Assembly examine the possibility of requiring that cities and towns provide services in a reasonable period of time for voluntary as well as involuntary annexations. Finally, SMAEC recommends that several representatives of affected low-income and minority communities be appointed to serve on the study commission to examine annexation laws and policies.” 

I’ll keep you posted.

Help for Waynor Road

March 5, 2008 

One of the small, mostly African American communities in Moore County, North Carolina seeking help is Waynor Road.  And it looks like help is on the way. Last week, an official announcement was released stating that the Town of Southern Pines was awarded a $750,000 Community Development Block Grant.  The long-awaited funds will go towards digging municipal water and sewer lines for Waynor Road residents.

 

I first visited the Waynor Road community in summer 2005.  Thomas Jones showed me his property.  Jones said he was proud of what he had built but worried his property value would evaporate if there weren’t municipal services to support the infrastructure.  The problem, Jones said was he and about 75 other residents lived in no-mans land:

 “…seem like our problem is everybody around us have water and sewage, even behind us…we’re just in one little circle in between.  Out there Highway 22, water…on the other side of 22, water…right here behind this house, water…by the ball field, football field, water.  We don’t have any.” Thomas Jones

Lawyers with the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights have long said a pattern of “municipal exclusion” has prevented basic services to be extended to pockets of Moore County like Jackson Hamlet, Monroe Town, Midway and Waynor Road.  As more and more homes in the expanding golf communities have been built, rural has become urban.

About a year and a half ago, the Ray family of Waynor Road became especially active in the pursuit of municipal services.  Jerry and Dorothy Ray live in a small wooden house with a tin roof. Their adult daughters – Doris Ray and Joyce Ray – live in separate residences on the same plot of land. Doris is president of Waynor Road in Action. 

When I visited Dorothy Ray last summer, she was hopeful but still uncertain if her community would ever get municipal water and sewer:

 “I hope to see it when it comes here, that’s my prayers. I hopeto be here and still see it.  I have grand children and great grand children. If it doesn’t get here for me, it’ll get here.” Dorothy Ray

Dorothy will have to live with deteriorating private wells and failing septic tanks for just a little while longer.  Now that the total $1.1 million has been raised, the project should be complete in two years.

Moore County’s Invisible Fences

February 27, 2008

Invisible Fences is the name of a conference I attended at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill back in 2004.  That’s where I learned there are several small, mostly rural, African American communities scattered all about the state, in need of municipal services like water and sewer. This has been home for many of these communities for generations – dating back to the end of the Civil War.

 

One of these communities is Jackson Hamlet, in southern Moore County.  It sits a fraction of a mile from one of the wealthiest municipalities in North Carolina – Pinehurst.  Organizations like the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC Law School say, though close-knit and nurturing, all-black communities like Jackson Hamlet are being systematically kept just outside of the nearest town’s boundaries. Long-time resident Carol Henry says the philosophy of some of these municipalities is to “keep them close enough to us to do the work, but far enough so they won’t benefit.”

           

Today, Jackson Hamlet and some of the other communities blocked by an invisible fence, are working together to devise a plan for change. With the help of community organizers and students and staff from UNC’s Law School, Henry and others have gotten the ear of elected officials.  This is the first of several blog postings that will document the successes and set-backs of several mostly African American communities in Moore County as they fight for services.