At Monday's High Point City Council meeting, concerned citizens shared a petition to retain Daniel Brooks' name at the site of a local redevelopment project slated to be renamed Legacy Ridge.
Brooks, an African American minister, was a pillar of the High Point community for generations and was later memorialized by the creation of the Daniel Brooks Homes, a middle-class development built for Blacks in 1942. The aging buildings were recently demolished to make way for a new, privately owned mixed-income housing development. A spokesperson for the Keepers of the Name group, Pastor Angela Roberson, claims voters who approved the $6.5 million dollar bond issue for the project were misled.
"The city council came to us and said that this bond was for affordable housing," says Roberson. "And that Daniel Brooks home properties would be redeveloped. And now three years later you say to us, 'well we learned that this project has been privatized.' How did that happen?"
Interview requests with Housing Authority of the City of High Point CEO Angela McGill were not returned in time for this story. A written statement published by the Authority reads in part, “When we embarked on the redevelopment of Daniel Brooks Homes, we knew and disclosed that the site was not going to remain public housing, but instead a new privately-owned mixed-income community would be built on the site.”
Roberson says she is not giving up working to retain the Brooks name.