Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods

by Greg Jarrell, Chanequa Walker-Barnes (Foreword)

Our Trespasses uncovers how race, geography, policy, and religion have created haunted landscapes in Charlotte, North Carolina, and throughout the United States. How do we value our lands, livelihoods, and communities? How does our theology inform our capacity--or lack thereof--for memory? What responsibilities do we bear toward those who have been harmed, not just by individuals but by our structures and collective ways of being in the world? Abram and Annie North, both born enslaved, purchased a home in the historically Black neighborhood of Brooklyn in the years following the Civil War. Today, the site of that home stands tucked beneath a corner of the First Baptist Church property on a site purchased under the favorable terms of Urban Renewal campaigns in the mid-1960s. How did FBC wind up in what used to be Brooklyn--a neighborhood that no longer exists? What happened to the Norths? How might we heal these hauntings? This is an American story with implications far beyond Brooklyn, Charlotte, or even the South. By carefully tracing the intertwined fortunes of First Baptist Church and the formerly enslaved North family, Jarrell opens our eyes to uncomfortable truths with which we all must reckon.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

291 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 20, 2024

About the author

Greg Jarrell is an author and musician based in Charlotte, NC. He studies and writes about race, place, and faith, with a particular focus on Urban Renewal. Greg works as a cultural organizer in Charlotte with QC Family Tree.

Greg is author of Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods, published by Fortress Press (February 2024). For updates on Greg's speaking and jazz performance schedule, see gregjarrell.com.

Reviews

[Jess Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpfully shows link between settler colonialism and urban renewal inside theologies of providence. I am inspired by attempts like these to tell a theological history of a very specific place. I think the theological implications could have been pressed way further than a measured vision of reparative work for white people to recognize how whiteness has wounded them also. Jarrell names and describes the problem but how this then alters one’s vision of God’s character, or how God has been lost (or displaced) altogether inside that problem, is a question I wish was taken up more explicitly.

[Savanah Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

So often we read American history and a governmental program seems distant and vague. We forget human beings (not a vague governmental entity) are the ones doing the work of implementing a program and human beings are the ones losing or gaining from that work.

In this book, Greg reminds us that people implemented the federal Urban Renewal program, people supported it or failed to speak out against it, and other people were forcibly removed from their homes because of it. Greg writes about the North family, the Brooklyn neighborhood, and white churches in Charlotte to describe the story of Urban Renewal in Charlotte, but it is a story that was repeated throughout hundreds of communities in our country.

A book like this one is essential reading if we want to learn from our past. If we dare to dream that a different world is possible, one of justice and thriving, we have to look back at the past, learn about the harm done, begin the process of repairing that harm, and live in a way that doesn’t repeat the harm again. Learning difficult truths about our communities and our faith is not easy, but worthwhile if we want that different world to exist. I highly recommend this book.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was on the fence between a 4 or 5 star review for this book, but ultimately I decided that Jarrell’s expert handling of a nuanced and complicated story as well as his thorough explanation of dense housing policy deserved all the stars. While I sometimes struggled with the writing style, I had to admit that Jarrell was covering an incredible amount of local, familial, and institutional history as well as the political and theological realities that made that history possible. Not only does Jarrell examine the affect of Urban Renewal on the geographical landscape of Charlotte, NC, but he follows its particular sins against a family of landowners, the Norths, from Brooklyn, a historically Black neighborhood that was razed by the city.

The site where the old North home, bought and built by formerly enslaved Abram North, used to exist is now a parking lot owned by First Baptist Charlotte - a white and affluent worshipping congregation. Jarrell’s quest to find out what happened to the Norths’ homestead lead him through the haunting history of Urban Renewal in Charlotte in which many of the ghosts that were created in the past continue to fade into the present. Throughout this search, he discovered how Brooklyn’s Black homeowners and worshipping communities were dispossessed of their land for the explicit benefit of white business owners and worshipping communities, proving that even the land we stand on is racialized and emphasizing how our own cities become symbols of injustice. Jarrell’s work in Our Trespasses is a first step towards addressing that inequity by calling the white Christian community into the work of acknowledging the harm done to their neighbors through immense financial and political power. Jarrell makes it clear that acknowledgement is not the end of what he calls white Christians to do but rather the beginning of imagining a new, more just, and more loving world for all people.

Our Trespasses is an expertly researched, deftly handled, thoroughly human, and incredibly brave plea for the Christian communities of Charlotte, and around the country, to see their past sins with uncovered eyes. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in housing policy, racial justice, and American theology.

[Gale Kinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming in February. Pre order a copy. I have read an early version and highly recommend it. Important history about the complicity of churches in discriminatory racist policies that led to the loss of a vibrant Black community in Charlotte. Greg traced the path of a family in the Brooklyn neighborhood who have suffered the damaging effects of those policies and practices. They represent millions across our country who were harmed by “urban renewal.”

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although sometimes I got frustrated by Jarrell's focus on Christian theology and theories of specters and disruptions, the history it shares is important and powerful. I hope more local historians focus on the story of how "urban renewal" destroyed neighborhoods like Brooklyn and the lives of its residents -- and how White Christian institutions orchestrated, justified, and profited from their actions.

[Carol Gray-adler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very illuminating history of the Brooklyn neighborhood in Charlotte and the white power that plowed it down. So much complicity from good Christians and well meaning government programs and little compassion for our Black neighbors who were displaced. Greg Jarrell tells a story that everyone in Charlotte should read.

[Whitney Bouknight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve lived in Charlotte for over 20 years and never knew the whole story of Brooklyn. Loved how Jarrell approached the subject by following one of the families who had been displaced. Should be required reading for Charlotteans.

[Lilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew much of the story behind Charlotte’s “urban renewal” and Brooklyn Village, but the research conducted to write this book blew me away. Even if you aren’t a resident of Charlotte, NC this book tells a story that many cities can tell. Highly recommend.