Martine Clark chopped up onions in a kitchen on Beatties Ford Road. She was making jambalaya. A rice dish indicative of New Orleans that includes tomato sauce, fresh vegetables, with chicken and beef sausages added as part of Clark's recipe.
Clark is the owner of Bite Your Tongue Authentic New Orleans Cuisine. She moved to Charlotte from New Orleans in 2005. After arriving, she connected with the Historic West End, which owns the building where her restaurant is now located. Clark says safety concerns didn’t faze her when deciding to open here last year.
“Some people have said that the area was not safe. I’m from uptown New Orleans, so to me, this is indicative of the neighborhood I grew up in,” Clark said. "So, when you are a part of the neighborhood or part of the community, you don’t feel that threat.”
Clark, who is African American, said she identifies with the mostly Black community on Beatties Ford Road. Clark is also part of the Historic West End Wednesday’s initiative. It’s where a group of local businesses offers discounts, as well as works on marketing and social media, to help draw new customers. Clark says the initiative is needed to change people’s perceptions.
“Especially Beatties Ford, just because what we know about the old narrative is. I think that’s changing,” Clark said. "I still hear some people say negative things about Beattie's Ford. But I also know a lot of people that been here a long time who see the change.”
Customers like Marzetta Sowell are who the initiative wants to draw. Sowell said she caught a bus from the Northlake area to pick up a velvet cake at Clark’s restaurant.
Sowell says she used to live on Beatties Ford Road for about 40 years.“It’s safe, but you've got to mind your business," Sowell said. “You mind your business, everybody will get along just fine. But yeah, it’s a good neighborhood.”
Still, Sowell said shootings and other activities are a problem: “Drugs are an issue here, oh yes, sir, it is.” Sowell said. "It’s scary, but it is.”
High-profile incidents of violence along Beatties Ford Road have occurred in recent years. In 2020, a still unsolved mass shooting left four people dead and several others injured at a block party. The incident occurred during a period when Charlotte saw a 45% increase in firearm-related assaults between 2019 to 2020, according to a report by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.
Beatties Ford Road is also on the cusp of rapidly gentrifying areas west and north of uptown, where high-end coffee shops and breweries mingle with original mill houses and new, bigger mansions. In response to crime, the city launched the Alternative to Violence team in 2021 and set up the group along Beatties Ford Road before expanding to nearby communities.
J’Tanya Adams heads the Historic West End, and said a few hotspots still draw trouble.
“We have convenience stores that sell loose cigarettes, and four to five alcohol, and allow people to stand around those establishments,” Adams said. "We have a lot of people who also come from other cities, and this kind of thing, people who are possibly consuming drugs or are supplying drugs; these are the kind of locations they go to.”
Through urban renewal programs in the 1960s, many African Americans were displaced from demolished neighborhoods like Brooklyn in uptown. They were pushed to places like Beatties Ford Road.
Adams says that the legacy of displacement still echoes decades later in the neighborhoods.
“If you came here now and drove up the street and saw somebody slouching in a chair that was inebriated with a bottle,” Adams said. "We're not the only ones who have alcoholics, but everybody else’s alcoholics are not sitting in a chair on a corner. We don't have them all over the place, but you could find one.”
Adams says the area is welcoming to all residents, including those with substance use and mental health challenges, but she wishes that acceptance was not taken for granted.
“Different people love living among us. We don’t mistreat people. But we wish people wouldn’t come here and disrespect our history and community just because we have been accepting of human beings, and believe that if you have some sort of societal ill or even alcoholism, you can go to treatment, and you can be okay. You have value, even though you may have a challenge at the moment,” Adams said.
Next week, WFAE's Elvis Menayese will take a look at how the Historic West End Partners has continued its efforts to change the area and perceptions around safety, and why successful small businesses have moved there despite the narrative, and why others love it there.
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