Asheville’s Andrea Clark remembered as an ‘inspiration’

ASHEVILLE – Known for her pictures depicting the “twilight” of Asheville’s Black neighborhoods previous to city renewal, the photographer and historian Andrea Clark died Oct. 29, her mates confirmed to the Citizen Times. She was 80.

Born in 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Clark moved to Asheville within the 60s and would quickly start her award-winning images that has supplied a glimpse into group tales that in any other case may’ve been forgotten. From 1965 to 1980, authorities city renewal would take the households of 116 residents within the East End/Valley Street and the land of roughly 930 residents within the Southside neighborhood, in keeping with urbanrenewalimpact.web and the town of Asheville.

Some of Clark’s work is stored within the Buncombe County Special Collections archive and has been displayed in displays on the Asheville Museum of History, YMI Cultural Center and the Pack Memorial Library. She received the Sondley Award from the Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County in 2020 for her photographs, which fluctuate from portraits to streetscapes to intimate depictions of every day life within the East End/Valley Street neighborhood.

Her dying was introduced on social media Oct. 29 by a number of mates and by the James Vester Miller Walking Trail. Many remembered her fondly for her love of group, native historical past and knowledge.

“With a heavy heart I am delivering the news that Andrea Elizabeth Clark has left us to be with the ancestors. She was undoubtedly a woman that left her mark while she was with us,” learn an Oct. 29 Instagram publish from the James Vester Miller Walking Trail.

“She was really one of the few who became the wind under my wings when I started my research journey,” stated Priscilla Ndiaye Robinson, a former Southside resident, native activist and historian who Clark mentored. She was an “inspiration,” Robinson stated.

Clark inspired Robinson to pursue her challenge “Urban Renewal Impact,” a historical past of the Southside city renewal challenge, the biggest challenge within the southeast, which is the topic of a brand new documentary. In 2014, the 2 shared the Harlin J. Gradin Humanities award, which acknowledges “transformative community projects” in North Carolina, and would later advocate for saving Walton Street Pool as a historic landmark, which turned a actuality in 2022.

“It’s beautiful with the way she captured everything, but it was even more beautiful how she started on the trail,” Robinson stated, referencing Clark’s advocacy for recognition of her grandfather, James Vester Miller.

Miller was born a slave earlier than the Civil War however went on to assist construct notable church buildings just like the Hopkins Chapel AME Zion Church and main public works just like the Asheville Municipal Building, which now homes the Asheville police and fireplace departments.

As a Black man constructing in Asheville throughout the Jim Crow period, a lot of Miller’s works had been solely attributed to him after his dying in 1940. Clark advocated for that recognition, working to cement his title on a municipal constructing plaque in 2017, and later founding the James Vester Miller Walking Trail, a strolling tour of the surviving Asheville buildings constructed by the grasp brick mason.

In 2025, a brand new park within the Emma group was renamed in Miller’s honor. Clark sat entrance row throughout the opening ceremony when her nice nephew Dante Driscoll known as her a “pillar” of Western North Carolina. Others knew her for her friendship and advocacy.

Rafrica and Aisha Adams knew Clark properly — Rafrica since he was little one and Aisha since she moved to Asheville in 2011. Clark took in Aisha “as a little niece.”

“She was like a living history,” Aisha Adams advised the Citizen Times. “She just really loved history and culture and our people.”

Clark beloved jazz, they stated. Wes Montgomery, Thelonious Monk and Hubert Laws had been favorites. Aisha Adams visited her within the hospital and performed her some music, primarily jazz, just lately earlier than Clark handed, she stated.

More: Trailblazing civil rights legal professional, Asheville native, James Ferguson dies at 82

Clark additionally took care to observe by way of with historical past training. When college students on the University of North Carolina Asheville started cataloguing properties acquired by the town of Asheville throughout city renewal, Clark attended pupil shows, stated UNCA Associate Professor of Economics Kathleen Lawlor, who researches the impression of city renewal on Asheville.

“She also welcomed me to her home, sharing many stories with me of her life as a young artist. Andrea is known in Asheville for her pre-urban renewal photographs of the East End, but she was also active in the theatre and wrote several plays,” Lawlor stated.

In an Oct. 30 social media publish, City Council member Kim Roney wrote that Clark’s images was “instrumental in documenting Asheville’s historic Black neighborhoods, joy, and resilience before and through the devastation of urban renewal.”

In 2023, Aisha Adams attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast with Clark. Dressed properly for the occasion, Clark shocked her with a suggestion.

“She said, ‘Oh, you think you are cute? Let me take a photo of you,'” stated Aisha Adams, who could not flip down a photograph from a world-class photographer.

More: Asheville Council OKs Walton Street Park as native historic landmark

More: Asheville’s Southside city renewal analysis to be topic of native documentary

Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, a part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com. Consider supporting this sort of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.