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Community centers and organizations

Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association is the nonprofit that about 85 households founded in 2007 in the Rogers-Eubanks area north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, a neighborhood of Black-owned farms by the late 1800s that had the county landfill beside it from the early 1970s. It filed a civil rights complaint over water and sewer service and runs the community center.

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Indexed works

Books, articles, records, and images about Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.

Held at OCPL

Rogers Road

Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009

Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.

Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.

✓ Held at OCPL · 975.656 EID NC Cardinal UNC Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

Elsewhere

Rogers Rd Community (Chapel Hill Historical Society vertical file)

Rogers Road, the historically Black community on the northern edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, in a newspaper clipping and a report. Undated folder in the Neighborhoods series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection (CHHS.001).

Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.

CH Historical Society

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In the chronology

Storyline about this site, with a page of its own:

  1. Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s. Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association: About Us
  2. David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers Road David Caldwell, later a RENA leader, said his family moved from Merritt Mill Road to Rogers Road when Black families got the chance to buy homes there. He recalled a farming neighborhood of about thirteen houses, with dirt roads and cornfields. People: David Caldwell Jr. From the Rock Wall: David Caldwell on the history of environmental racism in the Rogers Road community
  3. Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside it Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP. RENA Community Center: Staff
  4. Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them. People: Howard N. Lee RENA Community Center: The Orange County Landfill
  5. Residents founded the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association About 85 households founded RENA as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, putting a long-running informal community alliance on a formal footing. RENA went on to organize the Coalition to End Environmental Racism and to run the neighborhood's community center. Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association: About Us
  6. David Caldwell retires as a sheriff's lieutenant to organize in Rogers Road full time Caldwell joined the sheriff's department in 1985 after returning to the area and retired as a lieutenant in 2008 to work full time on community and social justice work. He became project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association. RENA Community Center: Staff
  7. Chapel Hill council received the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force's final report Council members Mark Kleinschmidt and Bill Strom presented the report, and the council voted 9 to 0 to send it to advisory boards, Carrboro, Orange County, OWASA and the city schools, with a joint public hearing planned for October 2009. Rev. Robert Campbell of RENA thanked the council for giving the community a voice. People: Robert Campbell, Mark Kleinschmidt Town of Chapel Hill: Council minutes, March 16, 2009
  8. UNC's library exhibited Rogers Road family histories drawn from Emily Eidenier Pearce's book The exhibit We're All Family Here: Preserving Community Heritage in the Rogers Road Neighborhood of Chapel Hill introduced families who had shaped the area from the 1700s on. It was inspired by Pearce's 2009 history Rogers Road, which RENA presents as part of its History Project. UNC University Library: We're All Family Here, Preserving Community Heritage in the Rogers Road Neighborhood of Chapel Hill
  9. RENA opened its first community center on Edgar Road Three years after incorporating as a nonprofit, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association opened a small community center on Edgar Road so the neighborhood had a place of its own to gather and run programs. RENA Community Center: About Us
  10. Commissioners set the landfill's closing date and created the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force On the night the Orange County commissioners voted to close the landfill on June 30, 2013, they also authorized an eight-member task force, with two members each from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, the county and RENA, to recommend how to deliver sewer service and a community center and how to guard against displacement. An interim report was due that August and a final report to the Assembly of Governments on December 6, 2012. People: Penny Rich, Pam Hemminger Town of Chapel Hill: Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force
  11. Neighbors form the Rogers Road Community Unity Board The Community Unity Board brought together leaders from every sub-neighborhood of Rogers-Eubanks, among them Historic Rogers Road, Billabong, TallyHo, Meadow Run, Phoenix Place and Sandberg, for continuing talks about the area's future. RENA and the Jackson Center reconvened it in 2015 for the planning work the three governments had asked for. People: Robert Campbell Orange County: Rogers Road, Mapping our Community's Future, May 2016
  12. EPA accepted RENA's civil rights complaint over water and sewer service for investigation The EPA Office of Civil Rights took up the question whether the Orange County Planning and Inspections Department had intentionally discriminated on the basis of race by denying water and sewer service to the African American residents of Rogers Road. RENA had filed the complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, which referred it to several federal agencies, and it was joined to an earlier complaint against OWASA accepted on November 23, 2009. U.S. EPA: Resolution and Closure, EPA Complaint No. 13R-07-R4
Show all 17 dated events
  1. RENA and the Jackson Center produced the Historic and Vibrant Rogers Road report The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the Marian Cheek Jackson Center put together survey analysis and community feedback on the neighborhood's future. Two years later the same partners ran the planning process behind Mapping our Community's Future. Marian Cheek Jackson Center: MCJC Reports
  2. The county-funded Rogers Road Community Center opened at 101 Edgar Street Orange County commissioners awarded a $522,488 contract to Riggs-Harrod Builders of Durham on April 1, 2014 after a first round of bids came in at two to three times the authorized budget and the building was redesigned. The larger center, with a community room, kitchen, computer lab and outdoor courts, opened that December a short walk from RENA's 2010 building. RENA Community Center: About Us
  3. RENA and the Jackson Center published the Rogers Road community plan commissioned by the three governments In July 2015 Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and RENA to run a community-first planning process as sewer design advanced. The resulting report, built from nine Unity Board sessions and two rounds of interviews, set four priorities for the neighborhood and became the reference document for the later zoning districts and Greene Tract resolutions. People: Robert Campbell, David Caldwell Jr. Orange County: Rogers Road, Mapping our Community's Future
  4. Ground was broken on the sewer extension to the historic Rogers Road area Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, OWASA and RENA held a groundbreaking at the RENA Community Center on Edgar Street after the sanitary sewer design was finished and a contractor hired. Construction was to begin in July 2017 and run 10 to 12 months. People: Robert Campbell Town of Carrboro: Sewer Construction in the Historic Rogers Road Area Will Begin This Summer
  5. Pop-up vaccine clinic held at the Rogers Road Community Center The Orange County Health Department held a pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Rogers Road Community Center for Hispanic and Asian American residents, many of whom do not speak English, after local volunteers asked for one and printed flyers in several languages. WRAL: Chapel Hill organization provides vaccine outreach for non-English-speaking community

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