Former chapter president Karen VanEman receives the Evan Mahaney Champion of Civil Liberties Award from board member Alan Robinson.

By Moe White

The Western North Carolina Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union held its annual meeting on Saturday, June 13 at the Greenlife Grocery restaurant on Merrimon Avenue. More than 40 members and supporters heard outgoing president P. J. Roth review the past year’s activities and install new president Alexandra Cury.

The highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the “Evan Mahaney Champion of Civil Liberties Award” to Dr. Karen VanEman for her work in the community on behalf of those whose civil liberties are threatened.

VanEman, also a former ACLU chapter president, moved to Asheville from Michigan in 2001 and quickly became involved with the local branch. One of her early projects grew out of the public protests against the war in Iraq, launched in March 2003, when she learned of the Asheville Police Department’s numerous arrests of protesters, often based on charges of “resisting arrest.” Community activists were pushing the city to establish a civilian review board to provide oversight to the APD, then led by longtime chief Will Annarino, and VanEman and the ACLU joined forces with them.

In her remarks, VanEman noted that, though the attempt was unsuccessful, she learned that 30 years earlier community leaders James Harris, Lonnie Burton, and others had pushed for the city’s police and fire departments to institute an affirmative action program to hire, for the first time, members of the minority community.

Performance poet Dewayne Barton performing at the annual meeting of the WNC Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

That drive had led to a formal agreement signed by the Mayor, City Manager, department chiefs, Community Relations Council representative, and other participants and observers. “If we had known of that pioneering work, and known of the agreement the city had signed, we might have been more successful thirty years later,” said VanEman. She thanked and acknowledged Harris, who received a strong ovation from the crowd.

Another person VanEman thanked was Mrs. Jean Boyd, a 1950s “bread & butter girl” at the Grove Park Inn who quit her job rather than follow the requirement that she hide her hair under an “Aunt Jemima”-style headscarf. She described the importance of reaching out, meeting people from across community lines, to make a difference.

Boyd later worked for the Head Start program. VanEman asked the audience to think back to the 1960s and ’70s and “imagine the impact of this African American woman going up to 99-percent white Madison County to implement Head Start.”

VanEman also noted the pioneering work done by photographer Andrea Clark, whose images of the East End neighborhood in the years just before urban renewal – disparagingly referred to as “Negro removal” – have been displayed at they YMI Cultural Center, in the Pack Library system, and also in a book.

As part of the event recognizing VanEman for her work, Asheville poet Dewayne Barton performed a poem that roused the audience with its call for unity and peace among peoples. His book of original poetry is available at Malaprop’s bookstore.