How the Grant Street Ladies, Monument of Faith Church, and BLK South Found One Another

BLK South founders standing with the Grant Street Ladies, Bishop Laney of Monument of Faith Church and Durham County Commissioner, Wendy Jacobs. - May 6, 2026

Sometimes people ask us how we ended up in Durham.

The answer is both simple and impossible to explain without telling a much larger story.

Years before we ever packed a moving truck or crossed state lines, Kendall and I were on a journey of rediscovering our own family histories. While living in Phoenix, Arizona, we began researching our ancestors and tracing the stories of the Great Migration—the movement of millions of African Americans who left the South in search of safety, opportunity, and a better future.

As we uncovered our family histories, we noticed something remarkable. Generation after generation, our families had deep roots throughout the South before eventually migrating north and west. The more we learned, the more we began asking a question that changed the course of our lives:

What would it look like to do the community development and community organizing work we know and love in a place tied to our ancestral and cultural stories? And how might our ancestral and cultural stories inform our vocational calling?

Could returning become an act of healing? Could we contribute to the flourishing of the very communities our ancestors were forced to leave behind?

Those questions eventually became the foundation of BLK South.

After months of prayer, research, and countless hours of asset mapping communities throughout the South, one place continually stood out: the Hayti District in Durham, North Carolina.

Hayti's story captured our hearts. Once one of America's thriving Black Wall Streets, Hayti was home to generations of Black entrepreneurship, education, faith, and community life before urban renewal and the construction of Highway 147 displaced thousands of residents and forever changed the neighborhood.

We sensed that God was inviting us to become part of Hayti's next chapter.

But we also knew something important. We were not coming to save a neighborhood. We were coming to listen and participate in the good work already taking place here.

When we arrived, we began meeting neighbors, walking the streets, knocking on doors, attending community meetings, and asking a simple question:

"What are your hopes for this neighborhood?"

Those conversations eventually led us to a remarkable group of women who have become affectionately known as the Grant Street Ladies.

For generations, these women and their families have faithfully remained on Grant Street. Their grandparents built homes here. Their parents raised families here. They weathered segregation, urban renewal, disinvestment, and decades of promises that often went unfulfilled.

They carried the history of this place in ways no book or archive ever could.

As we listened to their stories, they welcomed us to join them.

They recognized that although we were new to Durham, we weren't strangers to the story. Our own families had experienced the Great Migration. We had intentionally returned to the South because we believed neighborhoods like Grant Street mattered. We loved this place not because we had always lived here, but because we had chosen to root our lives here.

What began as conversations became friendship. Friendship became trust. Trust became shared work.

Having dinner with the Grant Street Ladies and Bishop Laney at our home. - May 1, 2026

Around that same time, we also developed a deep relationship with Monument of Faith Church.

Since the 1930s, Monument of Faith has faithfully served this neighborhood. Long before community development became popular language, the church had been feeding people, praying with neighbors, raising children, and standing alongside families through every season of Grant Street's history.

Today, under the leadership of Bishop Clarence Laney Jr. and the congregation, Monument of Faith continues to embody what it means to remain faithfully rooted in place.

As our relationships deepened, it became clear that something beautiful was emerging.

The Grant Street Ladies carried the memory and wisdom of the neighborhood.

Monument of Faith carried the spiritual legacy and enduring presence of the community.

BLK South brought additional capacity, organizing experience, community development tools, storytelling, and a long-term commitment to neighborhood flourishing.

Rather than creating something new, we realized we had the opportunity to strengthen what has already been cultivating for generations.

Together, we began dreaming about what the next fifteen years of Grant Street could look like. Neighbors gathered around tables to imagine a different future.

Together, we developed a community-led fifteen-year strategic plan focused on strengthening relationships, preserving history, increasing safety, expanding opportunities for youth, caring for elders, stewarding land, supporting homeowners, creating sustainable funding, and building systems that would allow the neighborhood to flourish for generations to come.

What has made this partnership so meaningful is that it has never felt transactional.

It has always felt providential.

Over and over again, we've found ourselves saying to one another:

"They were an answer to our prayers."

And almost every time, they respond with words that still humble us:

"No—you were an answer to ours."

That mutual gratitude reminds us that none of us could accomplish this work alone.

The Grant Street Ladies remind us where we've come from.

Monument of Faith reminds us who has faithfully remained.

BLK South helps imagine what is possible moving forward.

Together, we are discovering what can happen when history, faith, community organizing, and neighborhood love come together in one place.

We believe neighborhoods flourish when people choose to stay, listen deeply, build trust slowly, honor those who came before them, and imagine the future together.

Grant Street Community is teaching us that kind of faithfulness every day.

We are incredibly grateful to be writing the next chapter of this story together.