In 2023, the Fourth Ward Oral History Project was started by myself and Brody McCurdy (PhD Student in CRDM, North Carolina State University) as part of a partnership between Raleigh activists, historians, and members of the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association.
The Fourth Ward was a historically Black neighborhood in the southern downtown Raleigh area that was destroyed through urban renewal in the late-1960s to the mid-1970s, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of residents, the loss of dozens of Black-owned businesses, and the forced relocation of several of Raleigh’s longstanding historic Black churches. It has been an honor to work on this project, and I have been incredibly lucky to share our work with City of Raleigh councilmembers and staff at local events commemorating the history of the neighborhood.
My roles for the project have included development of our oral history website, the collection and transcription of oral history interviews, and historical research on the neighborhood, with a focus on the 20th century and the effects of urban renewal on Black communities in Raleigh and across the United States more broadly. As a resident of naturally occuring affordable housing in the city, also on land that was formerly part of the Method community, another of Raleigh’s longstanding historically Black neighborhoods, my work is rooted in the principles of scholar-activism. I feel that our work in the academy should be conducted with boots on the ground, in solidarity with the communities with whom we are co-producing knowledge, so my work is driven toward advocacy for the development and preservation of public housing, low-income housing, and the preservation and celebration of our city’s Black communities.
One example of these principles shaping the work of the project can be seen in our role in a week long series of events held in 2024 to commemorate the neighborhood’s history and to call for further support of the neighborhood’s preservation from City of Raleigh officials. As part of this series, organized as a collaboration between our project, Octavia Rainey, and members of the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association, I developed and designed a museum exhibit centered around the effects of urban renewal on the Fourth Ward and the ongoing process to preserve its memory and history. We were honored to be able to share this work publicly and to present the exhibit to several members of the Raleigh City Council. I have also provided recommendations for a forthcoming neighborhood study report that will outline further policy recommendations for the city, and we are committed to continuing these ongoing conversations with City of Raleigh staff in an effort to bring about meaningful housing policy change.
Our work, however, is ongoing. Currently, I am collaborating with Lydia Elrod, an NCSU alumnus from our M.A. of English program and creator of the Cherry Town Road documentary, on a documentary drawing on oral history interviews and depicting the preservation work of the neighborhood association.