(intro music) - [Narrator] Coming up on NPT reports, Jefferson Street, Curve Ahead.

We'll discuss how the past year of rolling disasters impacted this historic black community in Nashville.

A devastating tornado, global Corona virus pandemic, economic upheaval, gentrification, and racial unrest, threatened the end of the road for this once vibrant street that has survived decades of challenges since the 1950's.

- [Craig] It shut me completely down, you know.

You know things are going so bad.

You had no idea which way it was gonna go.

- [Narrator] Craig Head Barbershop on Jefferson is back in business using COVID-19 safety procedures, but many others have not reopened.

Those who leave are quickly replaced by new comers who see other opportunities in this community near downtown Nashville.

- Just put this up last week and we've had nine calls on it.

One thing, this neighborhood is definitely, you know it's growing up.

And a lot of people are coming in.

They're doing nice things to a lot of houses.

- [Narrator] In the face of change, some are taking innovative steps to ensure history and culture are not erased.

- A park, a welcoming presence in the heart of a neighborhood brings a city together.

The way a name can inspire other people when it belongs to a man like Kossey Gardner, Keisha's grandad, thank you very much.

(crowd cheering) - We're so humble that this is gonna be here forever.

And that's what grandad was really all about.

He's about helping everybody as much as he could help.

Thank you all.

- [Narrator] Are efforts like these, the key to preserving the legacy of Jefferson street?

What our long time residents and businesses doing to shape redevelopment efforts in their favor?

Joining me for a virtual discussion are Reverend Lisa Hammonds, pastor of Saint John AME Church.

One of several historic churches at the Jefferson street community.

Odessa Kelly, executive director of Standup Nashville, a community-based organization leading a campaign to help residents and businesses in North Nashville retain their properties.

Ed Kendall, attorney, former city councilman, and author of "A Walk Down Historic Jefferson Street".

Aleathea Harris-Little an educator, whose home on Jefferson street has been in her family for generations.

And Elisheba Israel-Mrozik, visual and tattoo artist based on Jefferson Street.

- Hello everyone, and thanks for joining this important discussion about the events of the past year and how they impacted the Jefferson Street community.

This is part of NPT's ongoing work to document and bring attention to the often overlooked history of African-Americans in Nashville, and Tennessee and the region.

Elisheba I want to start with you because we first met you right after the tornado in March of 2020 and your business wasn't impacted as much as many others but you took it upon yourself to do some community outreach and you were grilling and providing food for people.

And then you also used your art artistic talents to help uplift the community.

Tell us a little bit about what impact you think your efforts had at that time and what have you observed since the tornado and it's impact on the community?

- [Elisheba] Well, you know, like, like you said, I really am just grateful that we've worked so severely damaged that we could extend help to the community that supported us as artists and as a business or decade this year.

And I really feel like that people around we're very happy and grateful that there were people there who cared enough to take it upon themselves to offer services to the community, even if it was just a hot meal when everything else was confusion.

And I've gotten a lot of great feedback about the mural that we painted as well, and how it kind of just brightened up the area so that when they were driving down the streets filled with destruction that there was kind of this kind of shining light because art and color can really change your mood.

It can really change how do you, you know, see and feel and interact with the world around you.

So I'm very grateful that people have had a positive response to it and are wanting more.

One thing I can say, you know, after being shut down for a few months and then because of the pandemic and then coming back as to being open at a limited capacity the neighborhood and the community is still hurting and is still needing assistance.

And although there's places that are getting rebuilt a lot of them are without the people who were there before.

So I, I am frustrated in the fact that we are still losing a lot of the community that was here before and that area is becoming, you know, a different place and vultures kind of moved in during the confusion during the destruction to take advantage of people who were in a crisis.

And I really feel like we need to continue as a community to stepping in and try to preserve as much as we can and help those who still need help.

- [Narrator] Some of the things she mentioned are really in your area of interest and expertise Odessa.

So I want to bring you into the conversation because Elisheba talked about many people not being in the community anymore, people being displaced, when we met you, that was a big part of what Standup Nashville was trying to do was to get people to understand and be informed about how to preserve and stay in their homes right after the tornado because everyone recognized that that was a real risk in that particular community because of preexisting attempts to develop it and redevelop it.

So tell us what has come about with Standup Nashville since that time.

I know you have a campaign related to it.

How are things going?

- [Odessa] Yes.

Well, hello everyone.

And I'm glad to be here with this panel talking about this.

Yeah.

I mean the work essentially all the work we do in Standup Nashville when it comes back to the end of the day is how do we send our Nashvillians to stay in Nashville?

You know, how do we bring Nashvillians back home, you know as being a part of their identity, how do we make sure that we are, you know, putting priority over people as human beings and giving them dignity, you know, and and not weighing that versus their pocketbook.

You know, that's essentially what is at the core of all the work that we do.

And yeah, that's what happened, you know when natural disasters happen, you know they exacerbate the gentrification of historically and predominantly African-American communities or, you know working class, working poor communities as well.

And we're seeing that again today.

I mean, just look at Jefferson street, you know inch by inch, every avenue, you know from 3rd Avenue, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th is is climbing on up, you know, to where the demographics of the street in the community is changing.

And it always puts us in a hard place, right?

Because Nashville is welcoming the African-American community as welcoming of inclusion and diversity.

But what we don't want to see happen is that the only way that can happen is if you push us out of our communities, you know, that has to stop.

- [Narrator] Tell us the name of the campaign that Standup Nashville has launched since then.

- For this particular reasoning that we're here.

It is actually was the equity alliance who was a coalition member of Standup Nashville was called the Don't Sell Out North Campaign.

And we're still continuing that campaign because of the name, "Don't Sell Out North".

You know, and because like, as Elisheba just spoke about and you'll keep hearing is, is that you have developers coming in time and time again you started the BCLI, Boards Commissions and Leadership Institute as a city, we've done a good job of pushing forward of changing the narrative and expectations of things that we want to see but it's okay to say that we've dropped the ball.

That's how you move forward and progress.

Right?

A lot of the things that we thought were the responsibilities of the mayor or the council members is actually the autonomy and the power of these 79 boards and commissions you know, that govern us all.

We just had conversations about zoning.

We have conversations about planning, all these things that are affecting how these developers keep coming in and trying to take a lot of, of properties from these people who have no idea, you know what is happening on the back end of these things.

So we're trying to get our people, people like Elisheba but people like Pastor Hammond, you know and Aleathea on these boards and commissions who have a shared perspective of the people who are desperate and have an urgent need for help.

You know, instead of us always filling these boards and commissions, you know, with rich developers, Nashville is diverse.

It's a diverse city.

We want to keep it diverse.

Our boards and commissions not only should represent us by skin color, but it should represent us by socioeconomic you know, shared perspectives, as well.

- And reflect the community.

Aleathea I'd like you to join in because one of the concerns you had last year, right after the tornado, and you expressed concern about some vacant homes near your house that might potentially lead to developers coming in and gentrification.

I would love to know what has happened since then.

- [Aleathea] The home that I was referencing is of course still vacant.

And when I did my research, much of the property on that end is still black owned in regards to some vacant lots.

I know the church or the House of God owns quite a bit of the property.

My goal is I'm just, I'm in education.

My goal is just to teach my kids.

You know, this is who we are.

This is what we are.

You don't have to settle.

I mean, he just, you know, it just teaching them the value of just, you know, the essence of the house.

- [Narrator] And knowing the history - And knowing the history and you know my kids are, you know, learning that.

And I'm just adamant and teaching them that as they as they develop into young adults.

I value where I stay, I'm in the heart of the city.

I'm still in the historical Jefferson, North Nashville area.

And I wouldn't change it for anything.

- That's exactly why, you know, we have the Board and Commission and Leadership Institute for what she just said, you know, like, she shouldn't have to feel victim to whatever is going to happen to her.

What is, what I'm hearing is development is happening to her community, and she's not a part of it.

It should be happening with her and having her voice and having Elisheba and former Counsel Kendall's and Pastor Hammond's voice at the table.

- How can someone go about the process if someone watching this says, okay I want to be part of that like Aleathea?

- So there's two different things, currently right now a lot of the boards of commissions are appointed.

There are a couple that are appointed by the city council.

You can correct me if I'm wrong Mr. Kendall, but a majority of them are appointed by the mayor and then the city council votes on those appointments.

Right?

And there's a little culture in how they do that.

Right?

What we're saying is that how it's working is not good.

And it has a drastic impact on our communities.

We have, what's called the Sunshine Squad which is about to start up, sign up for that.

That is where we're going to start recruiting more people to sit in on the, the BCLI is a training program 60 hours we've been putting together over the past year since the Don't Sell Out North Campaign with all the organizations and community partners that we have to get people specifically trained and ready to sit on these boards and commissions.

- [Narrator] So there is a way to take action in a healthy and civil way to support the community.

Ed you've been mentioned a few times, and of course a lot of people learned about you in our documentary Facing North.

A lot of people think of you as the mayor of Jefferson Street, (laugh) but you've written about the community "A Walk Down Historic Jefferson Street" So tell us when you walk down historic Jefferson street, now, what do you see and what has the last year done to impact the community?

- Well, I guess I have mixed feelings mixed emotions about what I see.

And it's more about what I don't see my hopes are and have been that Jefferson Street would be redeveloped because I look at it as having been developed at one point or another, what I call the heydays but redeveloped with African-American involvement.

In other words, I want to ship businesses, residents, who can afford the kinds of structures that are being built there.

When I look at the new businesses that have come on Jefferson Street, except for like Elisheba, which I ran appreciate what you're doing there.

Most of them are owned by either foreign persons or Caucasians.

I know they're building several condos or apartments right there where you come off of the interstate.

I think it's maybe 12 or 15 of those there.

And they were built by outside developers, not people who who live in the community so my concern is that as Odessa and I talk about quite often is generational wealth because we have to have to first of all plan and get our plan together within the community.

Before we go out and try to seek other resources.

I mean, Jefferson Street and the Jefferson Street community is primed to be a model for this country.

You know, we have all this device, and racial devices, this now we can show the world that we can live together.

We can share cultures and we can also respect each other's businesses and support each other in those.

And I see Jefferson Street having that opportunity you know, most of the property on Jefferson Street now, people don't realize it's still owned by African Americans.

If you go all the way up to the interstate and come back toward Tennessee state, most of the property is still owned by African Americans, even the commercial property.

- All right, Reverend Hammonds I want to bring you in your church was heavily damaged.

I went by the other day and see that the church is no longer there.

So tell us a little bit about what happened with the building, the structure in the last year.

What are your plans as a church to continue to be a part of the Jefferson Street community?

- I do want to say that after the March 3rd tornado that was an EF3, left people who died and a lot of destruction.

That part of Rosa Park's of North Nashville did not get a lot of media attention.

I actually received the call about the church in my East Nashville condo, and did not think that that the church had possibly been affected because the media attention was so heavily focused on Germantown and East Nashville.

And so when a neighbor of the church called me and said you have destruction, I was like, oh wow, I'm in the bed.

I'm getting ready to go back to sleep having been downstairs in my bathroom.

And so I got up, got dressed, came over and saw the level of destruction on our side of DB Todd in North Nashville and was devastated.

And so it took the media admittedly several days in my opinion, before they started paying attention to 22nd, 23rd, 21st Formosa, et cetera.

And so that's a critique that I have of the media.

I mean, quickly after voicing that to international media platforms then we started seeing local media attention.

So that's just, I just have to throw that out there because I mean, we weren't on the scene.

I had no clue that that was a possibility.

Nevertheless, we were severely damaged in the March 3rd tornado, and eventually declared to be structurally unstable.

And we had to demolish the building in July but I can attest and testify to what has been shared about predators, who quickly ascended into the neighborhoods we had, not only the church affected but members who were neighbors of the church that had that sustained damage that were being approached.

I can tell you I was on the property several times a day every day after the tornado and people would drive by and stop and engage me, you know, well, what are your plans?

What are you going to do?

Do you want to go ahead and sell?

And they were bankers, investors, developers, they and even I witnessed during that first week of the, the storm, the tornado, drones hovering over our part of North Nashville, 37208 searching for blue tarps, potential homeowners or renters.

searching for blue tarps, potential homeowners or renters.

That's the thing that we've not touched upon yet is the fact that the area that that exists is are our neighbors are heavily renters.

- Are you going to rebuild on that spot?

- We do have plans to rebuild.

We don't know what that building is going to look like in the meantime we are.

And it's a, it's a longer process.

It's not as easy as even though we had really good insurance.

It's not as easy as breaking ground and starting to rebuild immediately.

Even though again, we had good insurance it's not enough to build a new building whatever the new building looks like, but in the process, and in the meantime, we are committed to being present and relevant in North Nashville.

We recently broke ground dedicated a community garden in which to be able to address the food insecurity and instability in North Nashville because we are 37208 exists in a food apartheid.

And I use the word apartheid versus desert because a desert indicates or implies that it is with beyond our control, right?

Apartheid is something that is created by humans and possible to be addressed by humans.

And so 37208 exists in a food apartheid where our people are not able to access fresh fruits and vegetables.

And so we want to, in collaboration with New Covenant Christian Church Disciples of Christ and our neighbors be able to grow our own sustenance be able to feed our families.

Cooking classes will be offered, et cetera, et cetera.

So we're very excited to stay present and relevant in our neighborhood.

- We've talked a lot about the tornado but there were rolling disasters last year, the tornado the pandemic, the economic impact of the pandemic.

And then of course the social racial unrest and the Black Lives Matter movement.

So there were these series of disasters really that impacted the community.

So when you hear a story like what Reverend Hammonds has just explained how does that fit in with what your goals are and what do you think will happen as we move forward?

- A lot of the revitalization of gentrification that happens to our community, aesthetically it is absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, right?

We want our communities to look like that.

We just want to make sure that we have the autonomy to do it ourselves, to build it and be welcoming of everyone else to come to something that we have built, we are a part of Nashville's fabric is just as much as anyone else.

We built this city with the infrastructure of the city the reason why it's called the "it" city.

You know, so the work that we do with Standup Nashville includes all of those things.

- And Odessa, how do you get people who are outside of the community to say, this is a gem, it's a hidden gem in Nashville.

- Well, see, I think a lot of it is the problem, right?

You shouldn't have to figure it out it's a hidden gem in order to give people the dignity and the places that they respect.

You know, there are people moving to Nashville all the time and we give them autonomy for the spaces that they occupy, you know, like how do you not know about you know, I mean, you can see it.

Everyone has eyes about the history.

It is not about the history.

It's about those who are presently living in those communities, right?

They have just as much autonomy as anyone else to see it fruition in the same way the other people outside.

The question is, it's not about having people outside come in and do something about it.

It is about us correcting and fixing the public policies that governs us all they allow voters and people to come into these community and be predatory towards them.

Right?

So let's make sure that we understand that the responsibility is us as a collective to make sure that we have basic standards and requirements and all of our public standards that will give people the room and the space to figure out what they're going to do in their own communities.

All right.

And keep some barriers between other people coming in and ripping it away from them.

- Yeah.

I just wanted to piggyback on something Odessa was talking about, you know outsiders know, that Jefferson Street and this community is a gem.

They already know that, but what they want to do is they want to come in and put up what they want.

And they don't have a sensitivity toward the people who live here who have a history here who understand the community and love this community.

So they already know that and it's just that one of the things I think I heard Odessa talking about earlier is don't sell out, you know, even even properties on Jefferson Street I encourage people to hold onto those properties.

We may get to a point where we are able to develop some of those, which we will represent the culture of this community, a bowling alley, several things back there.

Well, there have been several developers outside developers who want to come in and develop that property, but it's either they want to develop the high dollar stuff or they want to develop all low-income property, but it's all about them making money.

It's not about selling property to people in this community and sharing that.

It's about, it's about them coming in and making money.

And that's what I have suggested to community.

And we need to get together and come up with a plan of what we want on that property and propose it to them rather than allowing them to come in and telling us what we need.

- Elisheba, you know I think this is also something that you are concerned about and tell me what you're seeing as people come and to the art crawl and other activities around your business and learn about the community what you're seeing and what your hopes are moving forward.

- I'm seeing that people want more like they come over and it's sad that all that they can visit are a few small spots.

They want more walkable and engaging communities and spaces.

And having the park open across the street is a great start from the city.

But that is just one small thing.

I do want to hop back real quick and piggyback off something that Odessa was talking about real quick because I just find that it's very important what they're doing at Standup Nashville to try to educate the community.

And when Pastor Hammonds was talking about how these people got put out because they didn't know their rights.

And then also how people are just selling because you gotta think your house has just been destroyed and somebody waves a check in front of you with more money than you've ever had in your life.

You're not thinking that there's no way I can actually buy a house with that amount in Nashville anymore because the prices are just unreasonable.

So that the work that the Standup Nashville is doing is super important on the educational standpoint of educating the community on what it means to own an actually hold on to actual property because it's the only thing that is truly something that you can always pass down and hold on to to help build that generational wealth.

So I really want to try to use my space and the things I'm working on with these institutions around to build a permanent space that is owned by the community members that is owned and won't be able to be sold out and won't be able to be given away and can generate wealth for the artistic culture of the community.

Because the arts, I feel like is a very big part of the bedrock of a community and its entire temperature basically.

It can really affect how people want to interact with each other and it can help bring both the new and the old together in a space and in a way that's comfortable and allows them to make real changes in a place where they normally would maybe butt heads.

I agree with Councilman Kindle that Nashville Jefferson Street is the place where it's time to show the world how you can actually do this because it's possible.

It's all possible.

- We just want to be a part of it.

It's not, you know, I think as a kid I hated to see the Ritz torn down, but you know I was a kid, you know, he just but having advocacy and now I got a voice.

So now I don't want to see the was the Elk's Lodge torn down.

I don't want to see the buildings that are across the street that symbolize what Jefferson historically is, I don't want to see them torn down and redeveloped.

I want to see a commission of who that looks like even if myself has to be on it to advocate, to sustain that history.

And we teach the teens we teach and we educate the next generation.

We empower as quick as I can get a notification about "do you want to sell your house?"

is as quick as I can get a notification about these organizations that are advocating for sustainability in North Nashville.

- Great point.

And I appreciate you taking as an educator taking that position because each of you bring such important perspective to this conversation.

And I know a lot of people watching are pulling for the Jefferson Street community and all the things that you've discussed with us in this program.

I want to thank each of you for joining us for this really important conversation.

And for those of you who are watching if you want to learn more about the Jefferson Street community and its history and our work related to it, then you can visit our website at wnpt.org.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a good day.

(slow music)