Q&A: Renée White discusses the ongoing legacy of the East End/Valley Street neighborhood

by Nizarah Caddick 

As president of the East End/Valley Street Neighborhood Association, Renée White is no stranger to community activism. Holding the position since 2012, the Asheville native says her work within the historically Black neighborhood is driven by a desire to serve her fellow neighbors and preserve the area’s history.

“I saw the need for someone to step up to the plate and take responsibility for making the East End/Valley Street neighborhood a nice, safe place to live,” she says.

Over the last 50 years, White points out, much of the community’s former African American-owned businesses and homes have been demolished through urban renewal and ongoing gentrification. As a leading voice for those who remain, one of White’s major motivations is ensuring that lifelong residents aren’t priced out of their homes.

In 2018, the city of Asheville recognized White for these efforts, naming her Asheville Volunteer of the Year.

More recently, White received the 2022 Pauli Murray Brilliance Award from the Tzedek Social Justice Fund, a local organization that redistributes money, resources and power to support systems change and community healing in Asheville.

Xpress recently caught up with White about her latest award, as well as her ongoing work within her neighborhood and the need for community involvement.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.

How has your work as president of East End/Valley Street Neighborhood Association evolved over the last decade? 

My position has evolved tremendously. The more needs that become apparent means more responsibilities and challenges that I must face — whether it’s traffic patterns and speeding, park maintenance, or even the taxes in that area which have become astronomically high. Getting all the neighbors involved and continuously meeting with city, county, and government officials is part of the job.

We must continuously identify the needs that we have and then come up with procedures and policies that are going to make the neighborhood a better place to live. For example, we need for our seniors and lifelong residents to be able to age in place and not have to worry about losing their homes to excessive property taxes. We need to have food security and affordable housing. We need Black-owned businesses. And we need to be at the table when city and county government are making decisions that will impact our neighborhood. Meeting those needs has caused my work to shift.

With that in mind, what is one of the greatest or most demanding challenges you face?  

Some of the challenges have been going to the city government to speak up and say we want to be at the head of the table and not at the foot. When city and county government are doing things that impact an entire neighborhood, it’s important that people realize that our residents value where we live, there’s history in these Black neighborhoods and that a lot of it is gone, but we want to try to preserve what we have.

We may have to go to City Council, to county commissioners or even campaign in the in the state legislature to get things done — and all with little funding. So ultimately, my biggest challenges are getting funding and helping people understand that we have a voice.

Is there a particular moment or event over the last 10 years that has helped you sustain your work? 

I always have a prayer that I say to God because I do believe in God: “If there is anything that I can do to help anybody along the way, please provide me with the resources to do so, whatever they may be.”

I’m inspired by the fact that we have a food pantry here in East End, along with an edible garden; I’m inspired that we have an educational initiative at St. James Church; and I’m inspired by the fact that we’re impacting people’s lives.

If Asheville could have the perfect support system for vulnerable people in our community, what would that look like to you?

That would look like the work that the organization BeLoved Asheville does. That organization to me just exemplifies what that looks like because they go out into the streets, out into the community and they help people every single minute of the day and they don’t turn people away.

How has the pandemic impacted your work?

We can’t meet in person, No. 1. I’ve gone through these last two years and continuously had to do just about everything on Zoom. But we still have some people in our neighborhood who don’t have computers or don’t know how to work Zoom. So that’s been a real challenge, but we continue to do the work that we do — reaching out to our neighbors and making sure that they’re OK, handing out masks, ensuring they have their COVID tests. We’re still doing the work even though we’re not able to see people like we used to.

How do you hope your work inspires people? 

I hope that for generations to come people will know that East End is a legacy neighborhood, that there’s a lot of rich history in this neighborhood and that people won’t forget that East End is one of the oldest historical Black neighborhoods in the city. And even though we’ve gone through gentrification we welcome our new neighbors and hope they will join us in our effort to help us to remember our legacy.

What advice would you pass along to someone who wanted to make a difference in their community? 

Get involved! My advice would be for anybody that wants to make a difference: Get involved. Find out what’s going on around, who the powers that be are and what needs to happen to make sure your life and our neighborhood will be sustainable, comfortable, and help somebody else. Everybody has a different talent, so do that because you just never know what impact that might have. Don’t sit back and watch things happen, try to make a difference.