Race & Equity

StoryCorps Charlotte

The StoryCorps Mobile Tour stopped in Charlotte in April and May 2024. These are some of the stories people shared. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that records, preserves and shares the stories of everyday people. Since 2003, they have recorded over 80,000 interviews, amassing the largest collection of human voices in their archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Becoming an involved neighbor can heal 'gentrification guilt'

WFAE | By Nick de la Canal

Published September 8, 2024 at 4:36 AM EDT

Annetta Foard, left, and Tom Hanchett shared a conversation about how Charlotte's Seversville neighborhood has changed, and how community involvement can be an antidote to gentrification. — Annetta Foard, left, and Tom Hanchett shared a conversation about how Charlotte's Seversville neighborhood has changed through the decades, and how community involvement can be an antidote to "gentrification guilt."

Today, we hear a conversation about gentrification in one of Charlotte’s historic neighborhoods. Seversville, just west of uptown, sprung up as a white neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before housing more African Americans from the 1960s onward.

Among them was Annetta Foard. She now gives history tours of the neighborhood with local historian Tom Hanchett. The two friends talked about how the neighborhood is going through a new period of change, and a possible solution to "gentrification guilt."

The StoryCorps Mobile Tour is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.