Having just had surgery, the ill-timed Tropical Storm Helene relocated Bobbette Mays’ recovery. But distance couldn’t keep the community advocate away from her support of Shiloh, her neighbors, Asheville and Black voices on city and county boards and commissions.
When the storm hit, Mays went to stay with her daughter in Maryland for two weeks. But despite her house in Shiloh still lacking power and water, she couldn’t stay away.
“I came back because I just didn’t want to be there and not see what was going on here. I’m very passionate. I’m a community activist, and so I’m all about the people in the community and what we can do for each other,” she says.
This conversation is the second in a periodic series of interviews with Black community members involved in establishing reparations for those who have been affected by generations of systemic racism in Asheville and Buncombe County. The Community Reparations Commission put its work on hold as the community recovers from Tropical Storm Helene.
Mays is quick to express her gratitude to first responders, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers and the staff of Buncombe County and the City of Asheville who helped the community rebound.
“We just really appreciated everything that was done to help because we saw a crisis where everybody was affected. It didn’t matter who you were, where you lived, what you made or anything. Everybody was impacted by this,” she points out.
Mays herself is no stranger to community advocacy and volunteering.
After leaving Asheville to attend college at Winston-Salem State University, Mays moved to California in 1976. She returned to Asheville in 1988 with her mother and her two children. She lived in Shiloh and worked for the American Red Cross as a phlebotomist. She retired in 1997 on disability because her rheumatoid arthritis prevented her from performing her job. But she stayed involved.
She served as a community connector, bringing food from MANNA FoodBank to those in need, served on the 2021 ad hoc property tax reappraisal committee, worked with the Shiloh Community Association, including as vice president, and now serves as vice chair of the Community Reparations Commission. After the storm, she pitched in at Rock Hill Missionary Baptist Church, distributing water, food, clothing and supplies.
Xpress caught up with Mays in November to find out how Helene has — and hasn’t — changed her priorities.
Xpress: How was your experience weathering the aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene in Shiloh?
Mays: I thought about my ancestors. They would go to bed with the chickens and wake up with the chickens. When darkness falls, with no light, you go to bed, and you wake up in the morning when you look out and see light.
It was kind of a shake-up for [those of us in Shiloh] because a lot of the people in Shiloh are seniors. We have three or four generations of families here. Even though gentrification means that we’re only a small portion of African Americans in this community, those that are here, we’re very close-knit.
Have you always lived in Shiloh?
I was raised in Stumptown (a historically Black neighborhood in present-day Montford near the Tempie Avery Community Center.) We were not impacted by urban renewal. I lost a lot of friends that urban renewal took out that I went to school with or that we played with in Stumptown that had to be displaced, but we were still standing.
I always wanted to live in Shiloh because my family was in Shiloh, my church was in Shiloh, and so that was my main goal. I was so familiar with Shiloh because [we have] three or four generations of families in Shiloh.
What made you get into community activism?
My mother was somewhat of an activist. She was familiar with people in West Asheville, East Asheville, North Asheville. When I was little, we were going everywhere. And so that was how it started. Plus, my uncle is Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr. He was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. They were really good friends. When [Kilgore] passed and they had a service for him in California, Coretta Scott King gave remarks at the funeral service. He was an activist like that, and when we were growing up, that was what he always talked about — the importance of people and helping people. That was his goal.
My father passed away when I was 13, so [Kilgore] was like a mentor and a father figure. Even though he lived in California and we lived in Asheville, my grandmother always made it important for all of us to get together. So we all knew each other, and we all learned from each other.
Why is it so important to maintain Asheville’s legacy Black neighborhoods?
Somebody’s got to be able to tell the story. Somebody’s got to know that we were here. This cannot be taken away from us, and we want to encourage the young people that you can own and you can live and you can be in these spaces, but you have to get the education to know how to get to these spaces.
Do you think the younger generation understands the importance of legacy neighborhoods and their role in passing on that history?
The sad part is they want to get out, but some of them don’t know how to get out. In my generation, it was my mother and my father before he passed that knew education was important. Go to college, then you have something to stand on, like I started out.
So I think that if we give young people the opportunity, you don’t have to go away to college, but you can go to A-B Tech. But I think they have lost hope. It’s like they’re in a box and they don’t know how to get out of the box.
We’ve got to get them out of survival mode, into feeling good about themselves, and say, “I can do. I know I can do, and I can teach my children to do.”
What do you envision for Asheville’s future?
I envision that we will be able to grow and prosper. I think this [storm] might be a wake-up call. I want to be able to go out and tell young people that there is a way that you can get ahead. I want them to be able to feel like they’re important.
Who are your heroes?
I look up to Sophie Dixon, current president of the Shiloh Community Association, because she came from Stumptown too, but she has been a vital part of the Shiloh Community Association. I look at her, and even at her age, she’s still out there, and she’s still working and doing stuff and trying to make it better.
Also, I play the piano, and I played in Reynolds Miller Chorale and with Trevor Chavis, and she inspired me. She’s like my second mom, and she has inspired me to be the best that I can be.
Do you still play?
I play at my church. My mom was a musician, too. And my dad loved music. My mom said I was banging on the piano so much that at the age of 5, she got me a music teacher. So I started playing when I was 5.
Music gives me a sense of peace. I’m one that loves instrumental music with no words because I can just close my eyes and just listen to it, so I don’t always want to hear the words.
What would you like to see change in Asheville?
I would love to see more people that look like me come up to the front and join in on these committees and commissions in the city and the county because you cannot complain if you’re not at the table. And that’s a start because then you can start to learn what the policies and the procedures of your city and the county are. Don’t say, “I can’t do it” or “I don’t think that I could do it.” Just try it.
Reparations are BS. The are a liberal progressive feel good redistribution of money from people who never owned slaves to people who were never slaves