- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Diane English, May 20 2006
- Creator:
- English, Diane, 1957-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Thuesen, Sarah Caroline
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 2006-05-20
- Subject:
- Community activists--North Carolina--Charlotte
African American women--North Carolina--Charlotte
Charlotte (N.C.)--Race relations
Community development--North Carolina--Charlotte
African American neighborhoods--North Carolina--Charlotte
African Americans--Housing--North Carolina--Charlotte
African Americans--North Carolina--Charlotte--Social conditions - People:
- English, Diane, 1957-
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Mecklenburg County, Charlotte, 35.22709, -80.84313
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- This is the second interview in a two-part series with community activist Diane English. Here, English describes her work with the Belmont Neighborhood Community Strategy Force (BNCSF), of which she was elected president in 2003. She discusses her efforts to redevelop the Belmont Community Development Corporation (CDC) to give residents more stake in their neighborhood. English expresses the difficulties of sustaining resident involvement; to help meet this challenge, she took classes to learn how to be a neighborhood leader. English says that the media drew public attention to Belmont, which assisted in the BNCSF's efforts to remove the structural barriers placed in the neighborhood by the police department to help prevent drug dealers from entering the neighborhood. She maintains that the barriers did more harm than good, as they detracted from the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood rather than obstructing drug deals. Skeptical not only about such strategies, English also conveys her ambivalence about the police presence in Belmont. She also maintains that the city's bureaucracy limited the efforts of well-meaning residents to eliminate drug selling and other criminal behavior from the community, but she is hopeful for the future of Belmont. Though she worries that the revitalization of Belmont will increase property taxes, homeownership keeps her in the neighborhood. English ends the interview with a discussion of racial prejudice in Charlotte and the role of race in school curricula. She asserts that positive lessons from black history, instead of black animosity against whites, will bring about greater interracial cooperation.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/U-0184/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 14, 2008).
Interview participants: Diane English, interviewee; Sarah Thuesen, interviewer.
Duration: 00:46:50.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Kristin Shaffer. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
