Historic Community Relations Council Closes its Doors

The Asheville-Buncombe Community Relations Council has announced its dissolution effective February 29, 2016.

The historic organization’s mission will continue through contract services with the City of Asheville and Buncombe County to assure a continuation of support focused on efforts to shape a more inclusive, equitable culture for our community.

The Asheville-Buncombe Community Relations Council (ABCRC) began in the 1950s and played a crucial role in bringing about the peaceful desegregation of area businesses, schools, and public facilities during a tumultuous era in the United States. Across the postwar South, communities were driven by dissent, anger, fear, and frustration in reaction to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court that declared segregated schools “inherently unequal.” In some places, the reaction was balanced by the determination to pursue a process of healing and community betterment that had been stalled since the imposition of Jim Crow 75 years before.

Asheville and Buncombe County were fortunate to have neither the legacy of brutality that had ruined lives elsewhere nor the vehement opposition to desegregation that horrified the nation. Rather, the community included a number of both black and white civic leaders who wished to work together to ameliorate the worst aspects of Jim Crow segregation and find pathways to reimagine the community.

The process was not simple, nor was it painless; lives were disrupted, neighborhoods were displaced, emotions at times ran raw, but ABCRC succeeded as much as any community organization could to keep the scarring to a minimum and maximize the healing.

Under the leadership of Robert Smith, ABCRC was able to coordinate an array of professionals including attorneys, educators, business owners, and ministers from the black, Latino and white communities, who acted as liaisons to enable racial equality in education and employment. In later years ABCRC took up the responsibility to get involved in the integration of schools and the enforcement of fair housing laws. ABCRC made important contributions to help lay the foundation for a more just and equitable community.

Over the past few years the organization has found it increasingly challenging to operate. In part, many of the problems ABCRC was established to address have been addressed, if not fully resolved; additionally, the wide array of other organizations focused on specific areas of community life—GLBT issues, battered women, affordable housing, and a dozen others—make it more difficult to garner dedicated financial support.

According to its news release, ABCRC Executive Director Lucia Daugherty will become a contract worker for Buncombe County to continue the mission of ABCRC, to resolve community conflict and discrimination, and ensure fair housing for all people and to continue to work on relations between the community and the city and county law enforcement agencies.

In addition to the contract services, a three-person advisory board will guide the continuation of these services.