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| Angel Pittman outside her parent's home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph: Alycee Byrd/The Guardian |
A mobile hair salon was Angel Pittman's vision. The 21-year-old stylist used her savings from when she was 17 to buy three school buses for $14,000 and less than an area of public property in North Carolina for $10,000 in September. Pittman's idea was to park the buses on the property, convert one into a residence, and utilize the other two as traveling beauty parlors. She could establish business anywhere, make house visits, or do hair on her land.
Pittman attests:
I’ve never seen anybody driving around doing people’s hair. But not only did I want to get paid for doing hair, but I wanted to drive around, do a couple of homeless people’s hair and maybe go to some prisons and help incarcerated people.
Upon her arrival at this predominantly White populated area, she was approached by a man who told her and her parents that they were unwelcome in the area. She claims that an unwelcoming white neighbor who reportedly exhibited Confederate flags, swastikas, and KKK placards in his yard spoiled her plans. She believes he was responsible for, which she reported immediately after relocating to Salisbury in September.
Rowan County, 79% white and 17% black, is a "sundown town"—a phrase from the Jim Crow period that described predominately white communities that practiced racial segregation. According to North Carolina State University history professor Katherine Mellen Charron, sundown neighborhoods are still common in places like Rowan county to prevent African People from becoming landowners.
Hate crimes do not shake Pittman because she knows that nothing much has been done to fix such. She attests:
My dream is most definitely not crushed. It was stumped on for a little bit, but I’m back up, and I’m most definitely going to continue with my dream,” said Pittman. “I feel like there’s hope.
To cover her losses and purchase available land near Charlotte, Pittman is now seeking money. She has so far been able to drag two of the three buses to Charlotte, where storage costs are mounting. The second bus still in Salisbury was damaged so severely that it is no longer in service. Pittman intends to repair it and transport it to Charlotte.
She said that her family, particularly her father, who will not permit her to return to her Salisbury property out of fear for her safety, had been her rock throughout this.
