As defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the verb form of redress means “to set right, to make up for, to remove the cause of (a grievance or complaint), or to exact reparation for.” 

When most folks think of reparations in the contemporary context, they connect it to the issue of slavery, while some expand further into the Jim Crow era — the effects of redlining, urban renewal, and other racist policies that actively restrained the ability of Black Americans to build wealth or power. 

All too often, these policies are thought of as relics of the past, dreamed up and enacted by the nameless powers that be during “a different time” — nothing to be done about it now. The Redress Movement was founded with a goal to push back on that narrative. 

Inspired by Richard Rothstein’s groundbreaking 2017 book The Color of Law, which documents the intentional laws, covenants and processes that created housing segregation across America, The Redress Movement aims to redress racial segregation through local community work. 

With chapters currently operating in Denver, Omaha, Milwaukee and Charlotte, The Redress Movement localizes the fight against displacement while highlighting the fact that segregationist policies in housing never truly ended. 

With longtime Enderly Park neighborhood advocate Greg Jarrell taking the helm as senior campaign organizer for the Charlotte chapter of The Redress Movement in the spring, local leadership is looking to revamp its efforts, building a larger base and expanding its efforts in the city. 

On Sept. 10, they’ll host Lineages of Displacement & Legacies of Power, “an event about uniting personal narratives and building collective power for better neighborhoods and a more just city.” The event will feature facilitated conversations who can make connections between Charlotte’s history dating back to Reconstruction, then to urban renewal and displacement, then to those who face a similar threat now as developers and real estate agents eye the neighborhoods they were forced to move to decades ago. 

Sitting in Enderly Coffee on Tuckaseegee Road one recent afternoon, Jarrell explained to me why connecting with folks who have had lived experience with displacement is such an important part of The Redress Movement’s work. 

“I think of this as a city of two tales rather than a tale of two cities,” he explained. “We have these parallel stories all throughout our history; one of serial displacement, where it’s the same groups of people, oftentimes even the same families [who are affected]. Right now in Enderly Park, where we’re sitting, I could point you to half a dozen families that have roots in Brooklyn or in Third Ward or in First Ward who are now being run out of here by gentrification. It’s the same pattern repeated across generations.” 

As for the second tale, those are the ones that will drive the work moving forward. 

“The lesser known stories are the stories of building power and resistance to that displacement,” he explained. 

To bring these tales together on Sept. 10, The Redress Movement has invited Charlotte historian Tom Hanchett to discuss the Fusion coalition of the 1890s, a political movement that brought together Black Republicans with the mostly white People’s Party, also known as “the Populists,” who had defected from the Democrats in protest of the party’s domination by corporate interests. 

Fusionists saw statewide success in the elections of 1894 and 1896 before a white supremacy campaign funded by the state’s wealthiest interests organized a terrorist unit called the “Redshirts” that used intimidation, violence and fraud to snuff out the Fusionist movement.

To connect these stories to the present day, Ismaail Qaiyim of the Housing Justice Coalition will speak about the contemporary resistance work that’s been taking place over the years. 

“We feel like it’s really important to present that there are alternatives,” Jarrell said. “We can change the trajectory that our city is on. People have always been working on that, and we can step into that stream, join that energy, and create some resistance ourselves.” 

The role of lived experience

Between 2013 and 2019, the percentage of Charlotte ZIP codes with rental rates considered affordable to the median Black household dropped below 20%. Meanwhile, corporate investors bought a quarter of all homes sold in the Queen City during 2021, most of which were purchased in Black and brown neighborhoods.

For Angelia James, a member of The Redress Movement leadership team in Charlotte, dubbed the Roundtable, growing up in the historically Black neighborhood of Pottstown in Huntersville and now living in the Edgewood Road area of west Charlotte has given her plenty of experience with the cycles of gentrification and displacement that Black families in Mecklenburg County have faced over the decades. 

Read more: One of Mecklenburg’s Oldest Black Communities Makes Itself Seen

Having worked with Jarrell’s neighborhood-based organization QC Family Tree as well as the North Carolina Black Leadership and Organizing Collective in years past, she joined the Redress Movement in 2023 with a hope to expand her work. 

She said she wants to better educate her neighbors living along Bradford and Edgewood roads corridors near the Thomasboro-Hoskins neighborhood in west Charlotte, but also to reach other corners of the city where people are experiencing similar things. 

When asked how growing up in two areas that have felt the impact of segregationist policies for decades, she said it sparked a fire that has inspired her community organizing work past and present. 

“I have two things that happened: frustration, the rage, and not quitting,” she said.

Her own lived experience works as a connector when she approaches people about working with The Redress Movement. 

“I ask people, ‘Where did you used to live? What happened with where you used to live? How is it now? And how would you like to move forward with that knowledge?’” she said. “Basically, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re about connecting people and connecting communities.” 

Part of that connection work comes in the form of coalition building, as with The Redress Movement’s role in the People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) earlier this year. The PBC comprised 16 local organizations ranging from Roof Above to the local Public Service Workers Union that came together to make demands of Charlotte City Council in formulating the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. 

Much of The Redress Movement’s work with PBC centered on housing, demanding that council increase the amount of money going into the Housing Trust Fund to $100 million. Council met the request, but the work isn’t over. 

Redress is working to ensure that folks get out to the polls and approve the bond referendum, then to ensure that at least $25 million of the new funding goes toward affordable homeownership programs rather than solely funding the construction of rental properties. 

“So far, the city’s [Housing, Safety & Community] Committee is headed in that direction,” said Jarrell, “so we’re going to keep pushing to make sure that that’s how some of that money gets spent.”

Council will vote on funding policy guidelines for the $100 million at its meeting on Sept. 9, with staff recommending council approve $25 million be put toward homeownership programs. 

In the meantime, the local Redress chapter will continue to build a base through events like Lineages of Displacement & Legacies of Power on Sept. 10. 

“I think when folks walk out of the room, they’re going to be connected with some of their neighbors that they didn’t know before they showed up,” said Jarrell of his hopes for the event. “Any good organizing works primarily from relationships that are created, and we build from those relationships to create the world that we want to live in.” 

Lineages of Displacement & Legacies of Power will take place at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church at 3400 Beatties Ford Road 6:30-8:30 p.m.